




































THEY WHO WALK IN THE WILDS 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 


THE MACMILLAN CO. OP CANADA, Lrau 

TOSOH'S? 



/ 

THEY WHO WALK 
IN THE WILDS 


BY 

CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS 

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jBeto gorft 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1924 


All rights reserved 

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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 


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Copyright, 1924, 

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 


Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1924. 


MAR 26 ’24 


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CONTENTS 

Mishi of Timberline . 

Wild Adoption .... 
The King of the Floes 

Bill. 

Mixed Breed .... 
Queen Bomba of the Honey-Pots 
A Gentleman in Feathers . 

The Cave of the Bear . 

In the Moose-Yard 


page 

1 

32 

52 

72 

99 

122 

145 

168 

192 





They Who Walk in the Wilds 

MISHI OF TIMBERLINE 

The trail was not only steep and rough, but 
at the same time slippery with the damp of spring; 
and the traveller, in that uncertain greyness of 
earliest dawn, had to pick his way with care. He 
was nearing the “timberline” after a sharp climb 
of half a mile from the high but sheltered valley 
wherein he had made camp the night before. The 
woods, a monstrous jumble of rocks and trunks, 
matted shrubs and gnarled, sinister roots which 
clutched like tentacles for a grip to hold them 
against the tearing mountain wilds, began to open 
out before him, and he caught glimpses of the 
naked mountain face, scarred with tremendous 
ravines and scrawled across with crooked, dizzy 
ledges. Far and high, the eternal snows had 
caught the full flood of the sunrise, and every 
soaring crag and pinnacle stood bathed in a glory 
of ineffable pink and saffron. 

Merivale stopped, and stood watching, with 
an imoulse to uncover his head, while the trans¬ 
figuring splendour spread slowly down the steeps. 

1 


2 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

In his frequent trips from the East he had seen 
many such miracles of sunrise among the West¬ 
ern mountains, but familiarity had not dulled his 
senses to them, and he was never able to take the 
wonder lightly. But as he gazed, the downward 
wash of that enchanted light suddenly brought 
into view a shape which set Merivale’s pulses 
leaping and made him straightway forget the sun¬ 
rise. On the giddy tip of a crag which jutted out 
from the steep, stood perched a stately mountain 
ram, his noble head, with its massive, curled horns 
sweeping backwards over his shoulders, high up¬ 
lifted as he searched the waste for any sign of 
danger to his ewes. This was the splendid spring¬ 
time game in quest of which Merivale had come 
up from the foothills with his camera. He crept 
forward again, stealthily and swiftly, keeping 
well beneath the cover of the branches. 

Suddenly there burst upon his ears a sound 
which brought him to an instant stop. It was 
not loud, but as it came muffled through the gloom, 
there was something monstrous and terrifying 
about it. The sound came from somewhere above 
Merivale’s head and around to the left of where 
he crouched. It told him of a desperate struggle, 
of one of those tremendous battles to the death 
in which the great beasts of the wild so rarely 
allow themselves to become involved. There was 
a heavy crashing and trampling of underbrush, a 


Mishi of Timberline 3 

clattering of stones displaced by mighty feet, min¬ 
gled with great, straining grunts and woofs of 
raging effort. 

“Grizzlies, fighting,” muttered Merivale with 
amazement, and stole noiselessly towards the 
sound, rifle in readiness, eager to catch a glimpse 
of so titanic a duel. Then the noise was varied 
by a single harsh and terrible scream, after which 
the sounds of struggle went on as before. But 
now Merivale understood. “No, not grizzlies,” 
he said to himself. “A grizzly and a puma.” He 
had heard from the Indians of such tremendous 
duels, but he had never expected to witness one. 
His eyes shining with excitement, he hurried for¬ 
ward as quickly as he could without betraying 
himself. He quite forgot that in such a battle 
the great antagonists would be much too occupied 
to give heed to his approach. But it was slow 
work forcing his way through the rocky tangle, 
and the scene of the struggle proved to be farther 
away than he had guessed. Before he could reach 
the spot, the noise of the battle came abruptly to 
an end—and there was no sound but a laboured, 
slobbery panting mixed with a hoarse whining, 
which gave him an impression of mortal anguish. 

The next moment there came into view, lurch¬ 
ing and staggering down the slope and blunder¬ 
ing into the tree-trunks, a big grizzly, bleeding 
from head to haunch with ghastly wounds. His 


4 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

face was literally clawed to ribbons, and he was 
completely blinded. Mixed by an impulse of 
mercy, Merivale lifted his rifle and sent a soft- 
nosed bullet through the sufferer’s spine. Then, 
very cautiously, he followed on up the grizzly’s 
trail to see how it had fared with his antagonist. 

Some thirty or forty yards farther on Merivale 
came upon the puma, lying dead and mangled in 
the trail, its ribs crushed in and one great foreleg 
wrenched from its socket. It was a female— 
clearly a mother in full milk. Merivale’s sym¬ 
pathies were all with her, and as he stood looking 
down upon her and thought of the great fight she 
had put up against her huge adversary, he under¬ 
stood the whole situation. Obviously the wild 
mother had had her lair, and her helpless young, 
in some cleft of the rocks near by. She had seen 
the giant bear coming up the trail to the den. She 
had sprung down to meet him and join battle 
before he should get too near, and had given up 
her life for the sake of her little ones. 

By this time Merivale had lost interest in the 
mountain sheep. What he wanted was to find 
the puma kittens, which he had heard were easily 
tamed. But first, after studying the dimensions 
of the dead mother, he went back and carefully 
considered the proportions of the grizzly, ponder¬ 
ing till he had reconstructed the whole terrific 
combat which he had been so unfortunate as to 


Mishi of Timberline 5 

miss the sight of. Then he set forth to seek the 
orphaned little ones. 

The search was difficult in that precipitous jum¬ 
ble of rocks and undergrowth; but presently the 
trail of the dead mother, which he had lost on a 
patch of naked rock lately swept by a landslide, 
revealed itself to him again. Just then, from 
almost over his head came an outburst of small 
but angry spittings, followed by a catlike cry of 
agony. Furious at the thought that some prowler 
had reached the defenceless nest ahead of him, 
Merivale sprang forwards and swung himself reck¬ 
lessly up on the ledge where the noises came from. 

There, straight before him, in a shallow, shel¬ 
tered cave with the sunrise just flooding full into 
it, was the puma’s lair. The picture stamped itself 
in minutest detail on Merivale’s memory. One 
puma kitten, about the size of a common tabby, 
lay outstretched dead. A big red fox was just 
worrying a second to death, having seized it too 
near the shoulders and so failing to break its neck 
at the first snap. The third and last kitten was 
spitting and growling, and clawing manfully but 
futilely at the thick rich fur of the slaughterer. 
It was evident that the battle between the grizzly 
and the mother puma had been watched by the fox, 
who, as soon as he saw the result, had realized 
that it would now be quite safe for him to visit the 
undefended den and capture an easy prey. 


6 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

Filled with wrath, but afraid to shoot lest 
he should kill the remaining kitten, Merivale 
bounded forward with a yell and aimed a vin¬ 
dictive kick at the assassin. Needless to say, he 
missed his mark. He just saved himself from 
falling, and staggered heavily against the wall 
of the den, while the fox, not stopping to argue 
the matter and present his own point of view, 
slipped over the ledge and vanished, an indignant 
red streak, through the bushes. 

Merivale eased his feelings with a few vigor¬ 
ous curses, then turned his attention to the valiant 
little survivor, which had backed away against the 
rock wall and was spitting and snarling bravely at 
the new foe. In colour differing greatly from its 
unmarked grey-tawny mother, it was of a bright 
yellowish fawn, variegated with dark brown, al¬ 
most black, spots; and its long tail—just now 
curled round in front of it and twitching defiantly 
—was ringed like a raccoon’s with the same dark 
shade. Merivale, full of benevolence, reached out 
his hand to it gently, with soothing words such as 
he might have used to an angry but favoured cat. 
He got a vicious scratch from the furry baby paw. 

“Plucky little hellion,” he muttered approv¬ 
ingly as he sucked the blood, with scrupulous care, 
from the wounds, realizing that those baby claws 
might be far from innocent hygienically. Then, 
taking off his thick jacket, he dexterously caught 


1 


Mishi of Timberline 

the battling infant in its folds, rolling it over and 
over and swaddling down those rebellious claws 
securely, and leaving only the tiny black and pink 
muzzle free to spit its owner’s indomitable pro¬ 
tests. With a bit of twine from his pocket he 
lashed the squirming bundle safely, but with ten¬ 
der consideration for the comfort of its occupant, 
tucked it under his arm, and turned to retrace his 
steps down to his camp in the valley. Then it 
suddenly occurred to him that by and by the fox 
would return to the den for his prey. Being ab¬ 
surdly angry with that fox, he took the trouble 
to carry off the two dead kittens, tying them to¬ 
gether and slinging them to his belt. His pur¬ 
pose was to throw them into the torrent which 
brawled down the valley, in order to make quite 
sure the fox should not profit by his kill. 

For about a day the spotted youngster was 
irreconcilable; but hunger and Merivale’s tactful 
handling soon brought it to terms. It took kindly 
to a diet of condensed milk, well diluted with 
warm water, and varied by a little raw rabbit or 
venison. It throve amazingly, and by the time 
Merivale was ready to break camp and move back 
to his ranch on the skirt of the foothills, it was as 
tame as a house-cat and as devoted to its master 
as a terrier. 

Merivale maintained his ranch in the Western 
foothills—which was run the year round by a 


8 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

highly competent foreman—chiefly as an excuse 
for a long summer’s holiday and hunting. It was 
not till near the end of September that he started 
back for his home in Nova Scotia, taking his 
puma cub with him. The cub, now nearly six 
months old, was approaching his full stature, and 
was a peculiarly fine specimen of his race. Hav¬ 
ing by this time lost the dark markings which 
adorn all puma cubs at their birth, he was of a 
beautiful golden fawn all over the upper parts, 
and creamy white beneath, with a line of darker 
hue along his backbone, and a brown tip to his 
long and powerful tail. His ears and nose were 
black, which gave a finish to his distinguished col¬ 
ouring. In length he was close upon seven feet, 
counting his two-foot-six tail. His height at the 
shoulder was a little under two feet. In his play, 
which was always gentle, thanks to Merivale’s 
wise training, he was the embodiment of lithe, 
swift strength. His savage inherited instincts 
having been lulled to sleep or else never awakened, 
he was on the best of terms with all the dwellers 
upon the ranch, whether human or otherwise, the 
cattle alone excepted. These latter could never 
endure the sight or the smell of him. Very early 
in his career he had learned to regard them as 
his implacable enemies, and to keep carefully out 
of their way. 

With the children on the ranch—there were 


Mishi of Timber line 9 

four of them, belonging to the foreman—he was 
particularly popular; and to one, a long-legged 
little girl of about eleven, he was almost as de¬ 
voted as to Merivale himself. She was alter¬ 
nately his playmate and his tyrant. 

The name which Merivale had bestowed upon 
his pet was “Mishi-Pishoe,” the word by which 
the puma or panther is known among the Ojibway 
Indians. But he was always called “Mishi” for 
short, and would answer to this name as promptly 
as a well-trained dog. He would also come to 
heel for his master, like a dog. In fact, under 
Merivale’s training he acted much more like a 
dog than a cat, except that he could purr like an 
exaggerated cat when pleased, and wag his great 
tail in nervous jerks when annoyed. 

The railway was a good half-day’s journey from 
Merivale’s ranch, and Mishi, who had never be¬ 
fore seen a train, was terrified beyond measure by 
the windy snortings of the great transcontinental 
locomotive. He came near upsetting his master 
in his efforts to get between his legs for protec¬ 
tion. 

Merivale would have liked to take his favourite 
into the Pullman with him, but against any such 
proposal the conductor, out of consideration for 
the feelings of nervous passengers, was obliged to 
set his face. The young puma was therefore locked 
in an empty box-car, with a bed of clean straw, a 


10 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

supply of food and water, and his favourite play¬ 
thing, a football, to console him. 

But in spite of all this comfort the long, long 
journey across the continent was a horror to the 
unwilling traveller. The ceaseless jarring, sway¬ 
ing and roaring of the train set all his nerves on 
edge. He could only sleep when exhausted by 
hours of prowling up and down his narrow quar¬ 
ters. He would only eat—and then but a few 
hasty mouthfuls—when Merivale, at long inter¬ 
vals, came to pay him a hurried visit. For the 
first time since his outburst of baby fury against 
the fox in his mountain den, he began to show 
signs of the savage temper inherited from his 
sires. He was homesick; he was desperately 
frightened; and he was unspeakably lonely away 
his master. In revenge at last he fell upon 
the unoffending football, his old plaything, and 
with great pains and deliberation tore it to 
shreds. 

But as luck would have it, Mishi’s journey was 
brought to an abrupt and unforeseen end. It was 
late in the night, and Merivale was sleeping 
soundly in his berth, when the “mixed” train 
stopped at a lonely backwoods station in the wild 
country that lies between the St. Lawrence and the 
northern boundary of New Brunswick. A ragged 
tramp, seeking to steal a ride, crept noiselessly 
along the train beyond the station lights, and found 


Mishi of Timberline II 

the box-car. He was an old hand and knew how 
to open it. 

But as the door slid smoothly back, the tramp 
got the shock of his life. Something huge and 
furry struck him with a force that sent him sprawl¬ 
ing clean across the farther rails and over into 
the ditch. At the same insant the engine snorted 
fiercely (she was on an up-grade) and the wheels 
began to turn with a groaning growl. Mishi went 
leaping off at top speed through the woods, dou¬ 
bly driven by the desire to find his master, and by 
his terror of the panting, glaring locomotive. 
Deep in the spruce-woods he crouched down at 
last, with pounding pulses—while the train with 
Merivale asleep in his berth, thundered on stead¬ 
ily through the wilderness night. 

As Mishi lay there in the chill darkness, his 
nostrils drinking in the earthy scents of the wet 
moss and the balsamy fragrances of the spruce 
and pine, faint ancestral memories began to stir 
in the young puma’s brain, and his pupils dilated 
as he peered with a kind of savage expectancy 
through the shadows. He had long, long forgot¬ 
ten utterlv the den upon the mountainside, the ca¬ 
resses of his savage mother, and that last desper¬ 
ate battle with the marauding fox. But now dim, 
fleeting pictures of these things, quite uncompre¬ 
hended, began to haunt and trouble him, and his 
long claws sheathed and unsheathed themselves in 


12 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

the damp moss. Suddenly realizing that he was 
ravenously hungry, he glanced around on every 
side, confidently expecting to see his accustomed 
rations ready to hand. It took him several min¬ 
utes to convince himself that his expectation was 
a vain one. Truly, life had changed indeed. He 
would have to find his food for himself. He rose 
slowly, stretched himself, opened his jaws in a ter¬ 
rific yawn, and set forth on the novel quest. 

And now it was that Mishi’s inherited wood- 
lore fully woke up and came effectively to his aid. 
Instead of crashing his way through the bushes, 
careless as to who should hear his coming, he 
crept forwards noiselessly, crouching low and 
sniffing the night air for a scent which should 
promise good hunting. 

Suddenly he stiffened in his tracks and stood 
rigid, one paw uplifted. A little animal, clearly 
visible to his eyes in spite of the darkness, was 
approaching. Resembling one of those big jack- 
rabbits which Mishi had often chased (but never 
succeeded in catching) on the ranch, only much 
smaller, it came hopping along its runway, uncon¬ 
scious of danger. With an effort Mishi restrained 
himself from springing prematurely. Quivering 
with eagerness, for this was his first experience of 
real hunting, he waited till the rabbit was passing 
almost under his nose. Then out shot his great 
paw through the screening leafage, and the prize 


Mis hi of Timber line 


13 


was his without a struggle, without so much as 
a squeak. Filled with elation at this easy success, 
he made the sweetest meal of his life. 

As soon as his hunger was satisfied, a great 
homesickness and longing for his master came 
over him. But this, of course, could not be al¬ 
lowed to interfere with his toilet. He licked his 
jaws and his paws scrupulously, washed his face 
and scratched his ears like a domestic cat, then 
crept into the heart of the nearest thicket, curled 
himself up on the dry, aromatic spruce-needles 
and went to sleep. It was the first real, re¬ 
freshing sleep he had enjoyed since leaving the 
ranch. 

The sun was high when Mishi awoke, opening 
puzzled eyes upon a world entirely novel to him. 
Interspersed among the dark green fir trees stood 
a few scattered maples glowing crimson and scar¬ 
let in their autumn bravery. These patches of ra¬ 
diant color held Mishi’s wandering attention for 
some moments till his thoughts turned to the more 
important question of breakfast. Instantly his 
whole manner and expression changed. He 
crouched with tense muscles; his eyes flamed and 
narrowed; his long white teeth showed themselves; 
and he began to creep noiselessly through the un¬ 
dergrowth, fully expecting another rabbit to come 
hopping into his path without delay. When this 
did not happen, he grew angry. He had never 


14 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

been kept waiting for his breakfast before. There 
was something very wrong with this new world 
into which he had been thrust. Lifting up his 
voice, he gave vent to a harsh and piercing scream, 
hoping that his master would hear and come to 
him. 

At the sound, with a sudden bewildering 
whir-r-r of wings, a covey of partridges sprang 
into the air almost from under his nose, and went 
rocketing off through the trees. Mishi was so 
startled that he nearly turned a back somersault. 
Not lingering to investigate the alarming phe¬ 
nomenon, he went racing off in the opposite direc¬ 
tion like a frightened house-cat, till his wind be¬ 
gan to fail him. Then he huddled himself down 
behind a rock, craning his neck to peer around it 
nervously while he brooded over his wrongs. 

These, however, were presently forgotten un¬ 
der the promptings of his appetite, and he set 
forth again on his hungry prowl. Either by 
chance, or moved by a deep homing instinct, he 
turned his steps westward. But suddenly from 
that direction came the long, strident whistle of a 
train, wailing strangely over the tree-tops. At the 
sound, to him so fearful and so hateful, Mishi 
wheeled in his tracks and made off with more haste 
than dignity in the opposite direction. That dis¬ 
mal note stood to him for the cause of all his 
misfortunes. 


Mishi of Timberline 15 

At the bottom of his heart, however, the young 
puma, as he had shown in babyhood, was valiant 
and high-mettled. It was only the unknown, the 
uncomprehended, that held terrors for him. And 
he was not one to dwell upon his fears. In a 
few moments he had forgotten them all in the ex¬ 
citement of sniffing at an absolutely fresh rabbit- 
track. The warm scent reminded him of his last 
meal. He proceeded to follow up the trail with 
all stealth, little guessing that the rabbit, its eyes 
bulging with terror, was already hundreds of 
yards away and still fleeing. It had never dreamed 
that its familiar woodlands could harbour such an 
apparition of doom as this great, tawny, leaping 
monster with the eyes of pale flame. 

It was not in Mishi’s instinct to follow a trail 
long by the scent alone. Speedily growing dis¬ 
couraged, he hid himself beside the runway, hop¬ 
ing that another rabbit would come along. When 
he had lain there motionless for perhaps ten min¬ 
utes, his tawny colour blending perfectly with his 
surroundings, a couple of brown wood mice 
emerged from their burrows and began to scurry 
playfully hither and thither among the fir-needles. 
Mishi never so much as twitched a whisker while 
he watched them from the corner of his narrowed 
eyes. At last they came within reach. Out flashed 
his swift paw, and crushed them both together. 
They made hardly a mouthful, but it was a tasty 


16 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

one, and Mishi settled down again to wach hope¬ 
fully for more. 

A few minutes later a red squirrel, one of the 
most quick-witted and inquisitive of all the crea¬ 
tures of the wild, peering down through the 
branches, thought that he detected something 
strange in the shadowy, motionless figure far be¬ 
low. Nearer and nearer he crept, circling noise¬ 
lessly down the trunk, his big bright eyes ablaze 
with curiosity, till he was within a couple of yards 
of Mishi’s tail. Then, and not till then, did he 
catch the glint of Mishi’s narrowed eyes fixed upon 
him, and realize that the shadowy shape was 
something alive, a new and terrible monster. With 
a chattering shriek of wrath and fear, he raced 
up the trunk again, and dancing as if on wires in 
his excitement, began to shrill out his warning to 
all the forest dwellers. 

In two seconds Mishi was up the tree, gaining 
the lower branches in one tremendous spring, and 
scrambling onward like a cat, with a loud rattling 
of claws. But already the squirrel was several 
trees away, leaping from bough to bough and 
shrieking the alarm as he fled. It was taken up 
by every other squirrel within hearing, and by a 
couple of impudent blue jays who came fluttering 
over Mishi’s head with screams of insult and de¬ 
fiance. Promptly realizing that there could be no 
more secrecy for him in this neighbourhood, Mishi 


Mishi of Timberline 17 

dropped to the ground, and made off at a leisurely 
lope, pretending to ignore his tormentors. The 
latter followed him for nearly half a mile, till at 
last, satisfied with their triumph, they returned to 
their autumn business of gathering beechnuts for 
the winter store. 

The wanderer was by this time much too raven¬ 
ous to brood over his discomfiture. He must 
find something to eat. Resuming his stealthy 
prowl, he presently came to the edge of a little 
river, its golden-brown current gleaming and flash¬ 
ing in the sun. He was just about to creep down 
to it and quench his thirst when he saw a small 
blackish-brown creature, about the length of a 
rabbit but shorter in the legs and very slim, emerge 
from the water and crawl forth upon the bank, 
dragging after it a glistening trout almost as big 
as itself. 

Mishi had never seen a mink before, but he 
felt sure the little black animal would serve very 
well for his breakfast. In this, however, he was 
mistaken. He little knew the mink’s elusiveness. 
The mighty spring with which he launched him¬ 
self through the screen of leafage was lightning- 
swift, but when he landed, the mink had vanished 
as completely as a burst bubble. The fish, how¬ 
ever, was there; and wasting no time in vain sur¬ 
mise, Mishi bolted it, head and tail. It was hardly 
a full meal for a beast of his inches, but it was 


18 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

enough to put him in a better humour with his fate. 
He followed on up the shore for perhaps a quar¬ 
ter of a mile, half expecting to find another fish. 
Then, coming to a spot where the stream threaded, 
with musical clamour, through a line of boulders 
which afforded him a bridge, he crossed and crept 
again into the woods. 

Almost immediately he came upon a well-beaten 
trail—a path which, as his nose promptly in¬ 
formed him, had been made by the feet of man. 
Mishi’s heart rose at the sight. Men, to him, 
meant friends and food and caresses and, above 
all, Merivale. With high hopes he trotted on up 
the path till he emerged from the woods upon the 
edge of a wide, sunny clearing. 

Near the centre of the clearing stood a log 
cabin flanked by a barn and a long, low shed. At 
one end of the cabin a clump of tall sunflowers 
flamed golden in the radiant air. From the cabin 
chimney smoke was rising, and a most hospitable 
smell of pork and beans greeted Mishi’s nostrils. 
He bounded forward joyously, thinking all his 
troubles at an end. 

But at this very instant a big red rooster, 
scratching beside the barn, caught sight of the 
strange, tawny shape emerging from the woods. 
“Krree-ee-ee!” he shrilled at the top of his pierc¬ 
ing voice, and “Kwit-kwit-kwit-eree-ee-ee!” his 
signal of most urgent warning and alarm. With 


Mishi of Timberline 19 

squawks of fright, all his hens scurried to cover— 
though the rooster himself, consumed with curios¬ 
ity, valiantly stood his ground. A black-and-white 
cur popped round the corner of the barn, stared 
for a couple of seconds as if unable to believe his 
eyes, then raced, “kiyi-ing” with horror, towards 
the cabin door, his tail between his legs. 

This was by no means the kind of welcome 
which Mishi had been expecting, and he paused 
for a moment, bewildered and rebuffed. 

Fortunately for him, he was still at some dis¬ 
tance from the cabin when the small window be¬ 
side the door was thrown open and the stout 
woman appeared at it with her husband’s shot¬ 
gun. She lifted the butt of the gun to her shoul¬ 
der as she had seen her husband do, and pulled 
the trigger. 

By some miracle—for the stout woman had 
made little attempt to aim—a couple of flying pel¬ 
lets grazed one of Mishi’s forepaws as it waved 
conciliatorily in the air. At the crashing report, 
the clatter, the shriek, and the burning sting of 
the wound in his paw, Mishi bounced to his feet 
and went bounding away into the kindly shelter of 
the forest, his heart bursting with injury. 

The sting in Mishi’s wounded foot, as well as 
in his wounded feelings, now kept him going, not 
fast but steadily, till he had put many miles be¬ 
tween himself and the scene of his rebuff. He 


20 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

crossed several rippling amber streams overhung 
with golden birches and the waxy vermilion clus¬ 
ters of rowan berries. Not till just before sunset 
did he think about hunting again, and settle down 
to a stealthy prowl; and in the meantime sharp 
eyes, wary and hostile or shy and horrified, all 
unknown to him had marked his progress. Fox 
and weasel, mink and woodchuck and tuft-eared 
lynx, all had seen him, and recognized a new and 
terrible master in the wilderness; and even the 
indifferent porcupine, secure in his armor of deadly 
quills, had paused in his gnawing at the hemlock 
bark and quivered with apprehension as the tawny 
shape went by. Some ancient instinct warned him 
that there was a foe who might be clever enough 
to undo him. 

Suddenly Mishi’s attention was caught by a 
noise which curiously excited him, though he knew 
not why. It was a confused sound of tramplings 
and stampings and snortings, with now and then 
a flat clatter as of sticks beaten against each other. 
With a strange thrill in his nerves he crept 
forwards, and presently found himself staring 
out, through fringing bushes, upon a duel be¬ 
tween two red bucks in the centre of a little forest 
glade. 

For perhaps a minute Mishi watched the fight 
with a wondering interest. Then his hunger over¬ 
came all other emotions. With a mighty leap he 


Mishi of Timberiine 21 

landed upon the shoulder of the nearest buck, 
bearing him to the ground. At the same time, 
taught by generations of deer-killing ancestors, he 
clutched the victim’s head with one great paw and 
twisted it back so violently as to dislocate the neck. 
With eyes bulging from their heads in horror, the 
remaining buck and the does crashed off through 
the woods, leaving the dreadful stranger to his 
meal. 

For several days Mishi remained near his kill, 
which he had instinctively dragged into a hiding- 
place behind a fallen tree. He feasted his fill, 
slept a good deal, explored the neighbourhood of 
his lair, and began to feel more or less at ease in 
his new surroundings. Natural instincts rapidly 
sprang to life in him as he sniffed at strange trails, 
and he came to realize that the apparently empty 
forest was full of good hunting if only he should 
go about the right way to find it. At last, grow¬ 
ing tired of the remains of the buck, and the home¬ 
sickness for his master being again strong upon 
him, he set forth once more on his quest, working 
steadily southwards and westwards, and hunting, 
with daily increasing skill as he went. 

It was not until one night well on in October 
that Mishi made the acquaintance of the real mon¬ 
arch of the northern wilds, the great bull moose. 
The moon was at the full, a great, honey-coloured 
globe hanging low over the black, jagged line of 


22 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

the farther shore and flooding the unruffled sur¬ 
face of the lake with a long wash of glassy ra¬ 
diance. About a hundred yards ahead a tall beast, 
looking to Mishi’s eyes like an enormous deer 
with overgrown head and shoulders, came sud¬ 
denly forth from the woods, strode slowly down 
the wide beach, and stood close to the water’s edge, 
black against the moon. Stretching out her heavy 
muzzle over the water, she gave utterance to a 
strange call—long, hoarse, sonorous—which went 
echoing uncouthly over the solitude. She repeated 
the call several times, and then stood motionless, 
as if waiting for an answer. 

The tall beast did not look to Mishi like easy 
game, by any means; but being both hungry and 
self-confident, he crept forwards, seeking a closer 
inspection before making up his mind whether or 
not to risk the attack. Suddenly a dry twig 
snapped close behind him. He wheeled like a 
flash, saw a monstrous black wide-antlered form 
towering above him—and leaped aside like a 
loosed spring, just as a huge knife-edged hoof 
came smashing down upon the spot where he had 
stood. That stroke would have shattered his 
backbone like an eggshell. 

The blow was followed by an instant, crashing 
charge, resistless as an avalanche. But Mishi had 
not waited for it. He was up a tree in one des¬ 
perate bound. Badly shaken, he crouched upon 


Mishi of Timberline 23 

a branch at a safe height, spitting and growling 
harshly, the hair on his long, lashing tail standing 
out like a bottle-brush. For perhaps five minutes 
the giant bull raged below; then again from the 
edge of the shining water came that long call, 
hoarse but desirous. The furious bull forgot his 
rage; the stiff mane standing up along his neck re¬ 
laxed; and he went crashing off through the under¬ 
growth, ardent to respond to that alluring sum¬ 
mons. 

About a week later—and Mishi had travelled 
far since his interview with the moose—on a 
golden afternoon of Indian summer, he came 
out upon a rough country road, rutted with wheel- 
marks and pitted with the prints of horses’ hoofs. 
He ached for companionship. He wanted to be 
made much of. He lay down at full length in the 
middle of the road, and sniffed at the tracks, and 
dreamed. 

A sound of light footfalls, accompanied by a 
tiny rattling noise, aroused him. Two children— 
a long-legged, sandy-haired little girl in a short 
red frock, white apron and pink sunbonnet, and a 
stumpy little boy in blue-grey homespun and an 
old yellow straw hat—came loitering down the 
road, swinging a tin dinner-pail between them. 
Mishi was overjoyed. His dreaming had come 
true. That little girl looked very like his chief 
playmate on the ranch. He bounced to his feet 


24 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

and ran to meet them, prancing like a gigantic 
kitten in his delight. 

At this appalling apparition the two children 
dropped the dinner-pail with a loud clatter, stood 
for one second with eyes starting from their 
heads, then turned and fled for their lives. 

To Mishi the children’s flight was all in the 
game. On the ranch he had been accustomed to 
chase the children, till they grew tired of running 
away, when they would turn and chase him, after 
which he would throw himself down on his back 
and they would all fall over him. He had been 
severely taught by Merivale never to be rough in 
his play. Now he overtook the children, brushed 
past them, and careered on ahead. The little boy 
stumbled and fell down, his knees giving way be¬ 
neath him in his terror, as in a nightmare. The 
little girl stopped short with a dry sob of anguish, 
and stood over him, confronting, as she thought, 
instant death. She shook her apron at Mishi and 
cried tremulously: “Go way! Scat!” 

To her amazement the great tawny beast, in¬ 
stead of pouncing upon her, at the sound of her 
voice immediately sat up like a pussy-cat and be¬ 
gan to purr—a mighty sound, but even to her hor¬ 
rified ears, an unmistakable purr. She stared with 
all her eyes. Again she cried “Scat”—but with 
a little more confidence. It was an unfamiliar 
word to Mishi, and he could not make out what 


Mis hi of Timber line 25 

was expected of him. In his uncertainty he played 
his trump card. He lay down in the road and be¬ 
gan to roll, with all four great furry paws waving 
childishly in the air. 

The long-legged little girl was not only heroic 
at heart; she was also clear-headed and of a quick 
understanding. She dragged her brother to his 
feet. 

“Why, Freddy, see!” she exclaimed, steadying 
her voice. “He ain’t goin’ to hurt us. He likes 
us. He wants us to play with him.” She suddenly 
recalled the story of Androcles and the lion, which 
she had read in one of her schoolbooks. “Don’t 
you remember that man in the story, that the big 
lion loved so?” 

Terror slipped away from her. 

“Puss! Puss!” she cried. “Nice Pussy!” And 
she stretched out her free hand, while with the 
other she thrust Freddy a little behind her. Even 
to Freddy the great beast began to look less for¬ 
midable. He stopped crying, to stare with won¬ 
dering interest. As soon as Mishi got near 
enough, the little girl, with inward trepidation but 
outward firmness, patted him on the head, and as 
if by a flash of insight, pulled his ears, gently but 
authoritatively. 

In an ecstasy, Mishi rubbed his head against 
her scratched and sunburned legs, purring louder 
than ever. He felt that all his woes were at an 


2 6 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

end and that without doubt the children would 
lead him home to Merivale. The little boy, in 
violent revulsion from his terrors, began to laugh 
wildly, and flung his arms round Mishi’s neck, rub¬ 
bing his face into the warm, tawny fur. 

“P’haps we kin coax him home with us, an’ 
keep him,” suggested Freddy. 

The little girl pursed up her mouth doubtfully. 
‘Wish to goodness we could,” she answered, em¬ 
bracing the happy Mishi with ardour. “But you 
know we dassent. Mother would raise an awful 
row!” 

But on this point she had no choice. Mishi 
absolutely refused to leave them. He stuck to 
them like a burr, rubbing himself lovingly against 
them and from time to time eying them with anx¬ 
ious appeal. He was desperately afraid they 
might vanish and leave him again to his hateful 
solitude. 

The little grey backwoods farmhouse, with its 
wide farm-yard inclosed by two big barns and a 
long woodshed, looked very comforting to Mishi 
as it lay basking in the afternoon sunshine. He 
felt that he had come home. The kitchen door 
was flung open, and a woman appeared—a gaunt, 
lean-featured woman, soured by household cares. 
At the sight of Mishi her sallow face went white, 
and her mouth opened for a shriek. But seeing 
that the children were evidently on the best of 


Mishi of Timberline 27 

terms with the formidable-looking beast, her ter¬ 
ror gave way to shrill wrath. She hated house¬ 
hold pets of every kind, though the children, like 
their father, were somewhat recklessly addicted to 
them. 

“What d’you mean,” she demanded, “bringing 
a great big dirty brute like that home with you, to 
mess up the house and jest make more work for 
me? Test like yer father! No more considera¬ 
tion!” 

But Mishi already had his head inside the 
kitchen door, sniffing at the savory smells. 

“Git out, you brute!” screamed Mrs. Atkinson, 
retreating behind the door and making a pass at 
the purring intruder with her broom. 

The children dragged the happy and unresist¬ 
ing animal away from the door. “All right, 
Mother. We’ll tie him up in the cow-shed till 
Daddy comes home. Don’t be frightened.” 

They got a piece of clothesline, of which there 
is apt to be plenty on a backwoods farm, and they 
tied up the puzzled Mishi—as they thought se¬ 
curely—in a corner of the warm, shadowy barn, 
with plenty of sweet-smelling hay to lie on. Then, 
having fondled him, and tried to assure him that 
they would be back “right away” with food, they 
ran off, leaving the barn door open lest he should 
feel lonely. 

For a minute or two Mishi lay quite still, lis- 


28 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

tening to the rustle of mice in the hay, and watch¬ 
ing the long bright streak of dusty sunlight that 
came through the cracks in the warped board of 
the barn. Presently he heard the sound of wheels, 
of trotting hoofs. He pricked up his ears eagerly. 
How often, on the ranch, had such sounds meant 
the return of Merivale from a trip to the station! 
He heard the wagon stop—his ears told him ex¬ 
actly where—outside the other barn. He heard 
a man jump out. He heard the hollow noises of 
horse and wagon being led in onto the barn floor. 
A few moments later a man came into view, strid¬ 
ing towards the kitchen door—a tall man, like 
Merivale, wearing an old brown slouch hat much 
like Merivale’s, and carrying a gun and a brace 
of partridges. Mishi wrenched his head from its 
too-loose collar of rope, and went bounding hope¬ 
fully forth to greet the new arrival. 

At sight of the huge tawny beast leaping 
towards him so swiftly, an anguish of hideous 
question flashed through the man’s mind in the 
fraction of a second, and turned his blood to ice. 
Where were the children? Where was his wife? 
Why was the house so deathly quiet? He whipped 
the gun to his shoulder. The great beast was 
within a dozen feet of him. But even as his fin¬ 
ger pressed the trigger, the little girl, with a wild 
scream of, “Don’t, Daddy, it’s our good lion,” 
sprang upon his arm from behind—and the 


Mis hi of Timherline 29 

charge, flying wild, buried itself harmlessly in the 
side of the barn. 

In the next instant, even as he clubbed his gun 
to meet the expected assault, he was astounded to 
see his supposed adversary rolling coaxingly at his 
feet, uttering sounds which were an unmistakable 
purr. His tense grip on the gun relaxed; and his 
amazement hitched itself up a few more holes as 
he saw the children fling themselves joyously upon 
the monster, pulling its ears and fondling its for¬ 
midable jaws—while the monster, obviously de¬ 
lighted with their attentions, purred louder and 
louder. 

Jim Atkinson stepped back and scratched his 
chin thoughtfully as understanding dawned upon 
him. That very day, at the post office in Bird’s 
Corners, he had read a placard signed by one 
Merivale, offering a reward of three hundred dol¬ 
lars for the capture, alive and unharmed, of his 
escaped puma. The placard went on to say that 
the animal was harmless and affectionate, and an¬ 
swered to the name of Mishi. 

“I’ll be damned if ’tain’t the very one,” he mut¬ 
tered. “An’ if it hadn’t been for Sadie bein’ that 
quick, I’d have shot him!” This was an unpleas¬ 
ant thought, and he dismissed it. 

“Mishi,” said he authoritatively, “come here!” 
And the monster, gently disengaging himself from 
the children, came fawning to his knees, overjoyed 


3 <=> 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

to be called by the familiar name again. Taking 
him lightly by the scruff of the neck, Atkinson 
led him towards the kitchen door, where his wife 
stood noncommittally eying the scene. 

“Mother,” said he, “this here’s a tame moun¬ 
tain lion, what the man that owns him sets great 
store by. I’ve just seen a notice at the post office, 
offering three hundred dollars’ reward fer gettin’ 
him back.” 

“Yes, Jim A’kinson, an’ you come nigh shootin’ 
the poor beast, if it hadn’t ’a’ been for Sadie.” 
And Mrs. Atkinson sniffed as if to imply that men 
had no sense at all. Before her husband could 
think of any suitable retort, Sadie headed off the 
argument by crying joyously: “Then we can 
keep him here, can’t we, Daddy?” 

“Sure an’ sartain,” answered Atkinson, “till this 
here Mr. Merivale comes fer him. An’ we’ll take 
right good keer o’ him, too. Gosh, Mother, but 
that three hundred dollars is goin’ to come in 
handy, with the mortgage money due nex’ month, 
and you wantin’ a new coat.” 

Her objection to having animals in her spotless 
kitchen quite forgotten, Mrs. Atkinson led the 
way indoors, and herself offered Mishi a tin plate¬ 
ful of buttered pancakes. Mishi devoured them 
politely, though he would have preferred a 
chicken. Then, seating himself on his haunches 
before the kitchen fire, he began to wash his face 


Mis hi of Timberline 31 

with his paw like a gigantic tabby. At last he had 
escaped from the great loneliness. He had come 
home. And he felt certain that Merivale himself 
would presently come in by the kitchen door, and 
stroke his neck and pull his ears with loving rough¬ 
ness as of old. 


WILD ADOPTION 


It had been a wet spring, cold and belated, and 
the turbulent Wassis was still in flood, raging be¬ 
tween its scarred banks. A couple of hundred 
yards lower down, it plunged over the forty-foot 
drop of Great Falls and went crashing, torn to 
flying snow, through the black and narrow deeps 
of the gorge. The steady, trampling thunder of 
its plunge throbbed on the air. 

Near the edge of the high bank, but not too 
near, stood a lanky, long-legged, long-headed 
moose calf, sniffing at the green and brown leaf- 
buds of a poplar sapling. Its preposterously long 
nose was pleased with the scent of the bursting 
leaf-buds; but the awkward youngster had not yet 
learned to browse, even upon such delicate fare as 
poplar-buds. He was still dependent on the abun¬ 
dant milk of his great, dark-coated mother. 

The cow moose was at the other side of the 
glade, forty or fifty paces back from the bank, 
browsing comfortably on the tender, sappy twigs 
of a young silver birch. She was a splendid speci¬ 
men of her race, full five feet high at the tip of 
her massive, humped shoulders; her brown, furred 
hide was almost black except along the belly, 
32 


33 


Wild Adoption 

where it faded to a ruddy fawn, and on the lower 
parts of the legs, where it was of a pepper-and- 
salt grey. For all her strength and her imposing 
appearance, however, she could lay small claim 
to beauty or grace; her hindquarters were much 
too small and meagre to balance her grand shoul¬ 
ders, and her huge head, with its long, overhang¬ 
ing muzzle and immense, donkey-like ears, would 
have been grotesque had it not looked so for¬ 
midable. 

Presently, turning her head to glance at her off¬ 
spring, she decided that he was rather closer to 
the edge of the bluff than prudence would dictate. 
“M’wha!” she grunted, softly but emphatically. 
The calf wheeled in answer to the summons. But 
he did not instantly obey—for, indeed, the call 
had not been urgent. It had not been the usual 
danger signal. That cry would have brought him 
to her side at once. Now, however, he was in¬ 
clined to be playful, and to tease his anxious 
mother. He shook his head, and executed an un¬ 
gainly gambol on his absurdly babyish stilts of 
legs. 

In that same instant, the slight extra impulse 
of his kick being just what was needed to precip¬ 
itate the catastrophe, the whole brow of the bluff 
crumbled beneath him, undermined by the torrent. 
With an agonized bleat of terror, amid a sinking 
chaos of turf and stones and bushes, he vanished. 


34 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

In a few gigantic strides the black mother 
reached the spot, with such a rush that she could 
barely check herself at the brink of the raw red 
steep. The bank at this point was fully thirty 
feet high, and practically perpendicular. Bawl¬ 
ing piteously, her eyes almost starting from her 
head, she searched the flood. At first she could 
see nothing but the bushes and saplings as they 
swept along in the torrent. Then she caught 
glimpses of a small, dark form appearing and dis¬ 
appearing among them, feebly kicking, rolled 
over and over by the conflict of the tortured 
surges. A few moments more, and calf and 
wreckage together, with a sickening lunge, went 
over the abyss. 

Crashing through the bushes, and bleating 
harshly as she went, the frantic mother raced 
along the bank till she reached a spot just over 
the falls. Here she paused, and stood staring 
down into the thunder and the tumult. 

For a long time the moose cow stood there mo¬ 
tionless and silent, her dark, uncouth form sharply 
outlined against the pallid sky. At last she roused 
herself, and moved off slowly among the pointed 
ranks of the fir-trees. In addition to the pain of 
her loss, she was tormented by the ache of her 
udder yearning insistently for the warm mouth 
which it had nursed. 

Too restless to feed, she pushed her way far 


35 


Wild Adoption 

back from the gorge, far back from the hated 
thunder of the falls, and then wandered aimlessly 
down the wide valley, moving without a sound 
through the balsam-scented silence. For all her 
bulk and the spread of her great, cleft, knife- 
edged hoofs, she could go through the woods and 
the undergrowth, when she chose, as noiselessly 
as a weasel or a fox. 

Ordinarily it was the habit of the big cow moose 
to keep strictly to her own range, a section of the 
valley about four miles in length and stretching 
back to the hardwood ridge, some three miles 
from the river. This was her home, and she knew 
every inch of it. Now, however, it had grown 
distasteful to her. Continuing on downstream, a 
mile below the gorge, she found herself in fresh 
territory. Crossing a sparsely wooded rise, from 
which the lumbermen had cleaned out all the heav¬ 
ier timber, she saw below her a valley more spa¬ 
cious than her own, with a stretch of pale green 
water-meadow, or ‘Intervale,” where the wild 
Wassis joined its current to the broader flood of 
the Ottanoonsis. In the angle of their junction 
stood a log cabin and a barn, surrounded by sev¬ 
eral patches of roughly fenced clearing. 

The scene as a whole had no interest for the 
unhappy mother moose, except for one item in it. 
In a little grassy inclosure behind the barn, hid¬ 
den from the cabin windows, was a red calf, stand- 


3 6 They Who Walk in the Wtlds 

ing with its long legs rather wide apart in a pos¬ 
ture of insecure and sprawling babyhood. 

The loneliness, the helplessness, in the young¬ 
ling’s attitude went straight to the heart of the 
sorrowful mother. Involuntarily she gave a low, 
soft call, a call for which there is no name as yet 
in the vocabulary of either the naturalist or the 
woodsman. It was neither the mooing of a cow 
nor the bleating of a ewe, but it held something 
of both; and it was unmistakably a mother’s cry. 
Faint and far off though it was, the lonely calf 
heard it, and lifted up his head hopefully. 

The great black moose surveyed all the sur¬ 
roundings of that little inclosure with wary eyes, 
though the longing in her heart and the ache of 
her burdened udder strove to dull her caution. 
There was not a man-creature in sight. Satisfied 
on this point, she moved swiftly, but always noise¬ 
lessly, down the slope, through the aisles of the 
fir woods, and halted behind a screen of bushes 
close to the fence. The red calf was gazing all 
about him, hoping to hear again that mother call. 
His colour, his form, his moist, blunt, naked muz¬ 
zle were all very strange to the silent watcher; 
but her heart went out to him. Suddenly grow¬ 
ing impatient—for he was hungry as well as 
l one ly—he stretched his neck and uttered an 
appealing, babyish bawl. 

To the moose this cry was irresistible. She 


Wild Adoption 


37 


emerged at once from her hiding, breasted down 
the rail fence with a crash, and over its ruins 
strode into the inclosure. 

The calf was too young and unsophisticated to 
be afraid. He was startled, to be sure, by the 
great black form approaching him so swiftly, but 
there was no misunderstanding the sounds— 
hoarse but tender—proceeding from its shaggy 
throat. It was the same voice, which, heard from 
far off, had so aroused his hopes. Somewhat 
doubtfully he allowed himself to be muzzled by 
the tall, velvet-nosed stranger; but when, with a 
gesture quite unmistakable, she turned her flank 
to him coaxingly, his hesitation vanished on the 
instant, and he greedily began to nurse. 

Comforted, but ever vigilant, the moose stood 
for some minutes, alternately eying her new baby 
and scanning the barn and the clearing. Then, 
uneasy in that perilous neighbourhood, she firmly 
withdrew herself from the calf’s eager attentions 
and moved off towards the gap in the fence, mut¬ 
tering a gentle summons for the youngster to fol¬ 
low. And follow he did, at once, ambling close 
at her side, desperately afraid lest he should lose 
her. Presently the curiously assorted pair van¬ 
ished into the dark green mazes of the fir woods. 

It chanced that the owner of the little farm at 
the mouth of the Wassis was a newcomer to the 
backwoods. Not an experienced woodsman, not 


38 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

an adept in the wisdom of the wilderness, he was 
quite at a loss when he found that the calf had dis¬ 
appeared. His efforts to trail the fugitive were a 
failure, and he came to the conclusion that a hun¬ 
gry bear had broken in and carried off the tender 
prize. Thereafter he hunted bears with inplaca- 
ble hostility, though with very scant success, and 
those wary beasts soon came to know far more 
about him than he was ever able to learn about 
them. They sensed his enmity, and kept him un¬ 
der unsuspected observation. 

The cow moose, travelling slowly to allow for 
the weakness of her adopted young, worked her 
way far past her old range and took up a new one 
at a safer distance from the clearing. Suspecting 
that the man-creature might come searching for 
the calf, she forsook the valley of the Wassis 
altogether, crossed the ridge, and established her¬ 
self in a region of small, shallow lakes and wooded 
knolls drained by one of its wildest tributaries, 
Burnt Brook. It was a region undisturbed by the 
lumbermen, because the timber was small and 
hard to get out, and it lay somewhat aside from 
the trails of hunter and fisherman. 

In this invigorating environment, with abun¬ 
dant food, and exercise exactly fitted to his needs, 
the red calf throve amazingly. At first it seemed 
to him that he and his tall new mother were the 
only dwellers in the wilderness; for his strange 


Wild Adoption 39 

colour and stranger scent caused all the shy, fur¬ 
tive creatures to avoid him. But soon they realized 
that he was as harmless as any ordinary moose 
calf. Then he saw, all at once, that the solitude 
was in reality full of life. The tawny deer-mice, 
intent on their foraging or their play, scurried 
freely all about him, only taking care to avoid 
his clumsy hoofs. The weasels glided up and 
snarled at him insolently with their narrow, blood¬ 
thirsty muzzles in the air. The big, bulging¬ 
eyed snowshoe rabbits gamboled about him, glad 
of the protection afforded them by the presence of 
his mighty foster mother. And once in a while a 
crafty red fox, prowling past in search of a quarry, 
would halt and sit up on his ruddy brush of a tail 
to stare at him in wonder and interrogation, 
amazed that a moose cow should give birth to so 
curious a calf. The calf, full of childish pugnac¬ 
ity, would invariably run and butt at the bushy- 
tailed stranger. And that superior and self-as¬ 
sured animal, recognizing his childishness, would 
slip away with an indulgent sniff. 

After the cold, late spring, summer came upon 
the wilderness world with a rush, and all the 
browns and rosy greys and ochre yellows and dusk 
purples were submerged in floods of ardent green. 
As the heat grew and the flies became trouble¬ 
some, the calf learned from his foster mother the 
trick of wading out into the lake till only his head 


40 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

was above water. Then, plunging his head under 
to secure a mouthful of water-lily root, which the 
mother taught him to relish, he would drown his 
winged tormentors by the myriad. 

To join them in this cool retreat one day came 
two big black moose bulls. At this season their 
new antlers—the old ones having been shed early 
in the preceding winter—had not yet begun to 
sprout, and so they looked very much like the 
cow, except for their greater bulk and height. At 
this time of year they had no thought of mating, 
and so there was no jealous rivalry between them; 
their attitude towards the comely cow was one of 
good-natured indifference. But the red calf, which 
seemed to belong to her, excited their keenest 
curiosity. They stood and eyed him intently for 
some moments, while he returned the formidable 
stare quite unabashed. Presently they strode up 
close to him, one on each side, and sniffed him 
over, with loud snortings, and harsh mumblings 
in their throats. Not quite liking these attentions, 
the red calf drew back a step or two. Apparently 
there was some disapproval in their mumblings; 
for suddenly the cow, with an angry grunt, ran at 
them, and shouldered the nearest bull aside with¬ 
out ceremony. 

The two bulls, respecting the sacred rights of 
a mother, promptly gave way, and wandered off 
lazily down to the water to pull lily-roots. If a cow 


Wild Adoption 41 

of their species was unfortunate enough to give 
birth to such a ridiculous and unmooselike off- 
spring, well, it was her own affair and they were 
not disposed to worry about it. Thereafter, 
when any of the bulls of her kind were about, the 
cow always made haste to show that the red calf 
was hers, in order to avoid any possible unpleas¬ 
antness. She was, indeed, as often happens, more 
devoted to this strange foster-child of hers than 
she had ever been to her own offspring. She 
never quite understood his moods or his manners, 
and this kept her interest keen. 

It was not till late autumn, indeed, that the red 
calf realized it was possible for his dark mother 
to have any interest in life except himself. When 
his green world had turned to a riot of purple and 
russet and pale gold and flaming scarlet, and the 
wax-vermilion of the mountain-ash berries hung 
in lavish clusters over the white granite rocks, and 
thin frosts laced and powdered the glades at sun¬ 
rise with sparkling silver and opal, he found his 
mother growing restless and sometimes forgetful 
of his presence. By this time the moose bulls, 
whom he occasionally caught sight of as they 
strode through the underbrush, had grown their 
mighty palmated antlers, and become so magnifi¬ 
cent as to impress even his audacious and irrev¬ 
erent young spirit. He experienced his first sense 
of awe when he heard them bellowing their hoarse 


42 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

challenges across the night and thrashing the 
bushes fiercely with their antlers. 

One still, crisp night in October, when the lakes 
lay glassy silver and steel beneath a low primrose- 
coloured moon, the tall cow wandered down the 
beach, stretched her head out over the water and 
gave voice to a long, sonorous call which was 
unlike anything the calf had ever before heard her 
utter. It was answered almost at once by a harshly 
eager voice from the black woods around the 
outlet. Puzzled and anxious, the calf trotted 
down and nosed at his mother to attract her at¬ 
tention. To his surprise she brushed him aside 
with a sweep of her great head, impatiently. 
Much offended, he drew away. There was some¬ 
thing in the air which he did not understand, 
and so he too stood waiting, like his mother. 

Some minutes later the thick bushes on the 
bank above parted noiselessly, and a trim young 
bull, with slender antlers only in the third year, 
stepped down the beach. The cow turned her 
head to greet him with a guttural murmur of 
welcome. Before responding, however, the new¬ 
comer, with a threatening squeal, lowered his 
antlers, and chased the indignant calf away some 
fifty yards up the beach. Then he strode back 
proudly to the waiting cow, and the two began 
to make friends, sniffing at and caressing each 
other with their long, sensitive muzzles. 


43 


Wild Adoption 

These pleasant preliminaries of courtship, how¬ 
ever, were rudely interrupted. From back in the 
thickets came a mighty challenging roar, followed 
by a heavy crashing. The young bull wheeled 
about and roared furiously in reply, prepared to 
fight for his new mate. But when, a moment 
later, a gigantic black head, with antlers as wide 
again as his own, appeared above the bushes, the 
young bull’s heart misgave him. The new arrival 
came smashing down upon the beach, roaring and 
snorting, magnificent in his prime. Whereupon 
the unfortunate youngster, knowing himself hope¬ 
lessly overmatched, turned tail and made off at his 
best speed, to hide his discomfiture in the fir woods, 
while the faithless cow welcomed the newcomer 
with enthusiasm. 

A few hours later, when the pair withdrew 
among the trees to lie down and sleep, the lonely 
calf, venturing to approach his mother again, 
was received with quite the old affection. The 
great bull, perceiving this, and being too experi¬ 
enced to be jealous of such an infant, showed no 
objection to his company. In the chill grey of 
dawn they all rose to their feet and fell to brows¬ 
ing together till the sunrise broke in gold and fiery 
rose over the misty lake. 

After two or three rebuffs the calf learned to 
keep his distance at times, but for the greater 
part of the time he had no reason to resent the 


44 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

stranger’s presence. A day or two later, more¬ 
over, he found that the great bull, though so 
scornfully indifferent to him, was not indifferent 
to his duties as temporary father-by-adoption. 
It was towards midnight, and the cow and bull 
were down by the water in the flooding moonlight, 
while the calf, driven away and for the time for¬ 
gotten, stood dejected behind a clump of osiers 
some fifty or sixty yards along the beach. A 
hungry bear, seizing the opportunity, launched 
himself down the bank and rushed upon the deso¬ 
late figure, expecting an easy prey. Just in time 
to evade that fatal rush the calf saw the danger. 
Bawling shrilly with terror he dashed down the 
beach, the bear in hot pursuit and swiftly over¬ 
hauling him. 

But the calf’s wild appeal did not fall on deaf 
ears. The stiff black manes lifting along their 
necks with wrath, both the bull and the cow came 
charging up the beach to his rescue. The bear, 
rounding the osier thicket, was just gathering 
himself for the final spring, when he caught sight 
of the rescuers. He was a big bear, old and of 
ugly temper, and the cow alone he would not 
have hesitated to tackle. But when he saw the 
stature of the great bull he was seized with sudden 
discretion. He stopped short, hesitated for a sec¬ 
ond, and then withdrew, grumbling but dignified, 
behind the osiers. The cow halted beside the 


Wild Adoption 


45 


calf, to nuzzle him and inquire if he was hurt. 
But the bull, beside himself with rage, charged 
on and came crashing straight through the osiers. 
Whereupon the bear, appalled at his fury, threw 
dignity to the winds and fled at full gallop, like a 
frightened cat, leaving the triumphant bull to 
thrash the bushes and roar his defiance. 

The great bull stayed with the red calf and 
his mother for five or six days, and then wandered 
off in search of other mates. But these, as it ap¬ 
peared, failed to hold his fancy; for towards the 
end of November, after the first heavy snowfall, 
he returned, and took charge of the family for the 
winter. Moving back from the lake to a sheltered 
and thick-wooded valley where such forage as 
moose love—especially birch and poplar and ma¬ 
ple— was abundant, he established their winter 
quarters. There they trampled down deep paths 
in the ever-increasing snow, and lay snugly housed 
from storm beneath the dense branches of an over¬ 
hanging hemlock. The calf, fortunately for him-; 
self, had learned from his mother to browse on 
twigs and not to depend on grass for his nour¬ 
ishment, and so he got through the winter without 
starving. 

The intense cold was a searching trial to the 
calf, but by sleeping huddled between his mother 
and the bull—who had lost his antlers soon after 
Christmas—he managed to keep from freezing, 


46 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

while his red coat grew so long and shaggy that 
his late owner, back at the clearing on the Otta- 
noonsis, would never have recognized him. The 
return of spring found him emaciated but vigor¬ 
ous, and with a fierce appetite for the long, brown, 
withered grass of open swales and for the succu¬ 
lent roots of the sweet-flag and bulrush along the 
edges of the lake. He was heartily sick of birch- 
twigs. When the trees began to film with green 
beneath the sun and showers of May, the big bull 
wandered off; and the Red Calf and his mother 
(she had failed through some mischance, to pro¬ 
duce a new calf that season) found themselves 
once more alone together beside their lonely lake. 

The summer passed rather uneventfully, and 
by autumn Red Calf was a sturdy and agile young 
bull, armed with a pair of horns which were short 
but exceedingly sharp. Pugnacious of disposition, 
but with no foe to vent his pugnacity upon, he 
was forever butting at dead stumps and testing 
those new horns of his by goring and tossing the 
tangled bush. His mother, still devoted as ever, 
would watch with mild amazement these exuberant 
antics, so unlike what those of her own calf 
would have been. 

When the mating moon of October began again 
to stir new fire in the cow’s veins, Red Calf got 
his first chance to put his untried prowess to the 
test. One evening just after moonrise, before the 


47 


Wild Adoption 

restless cow had begun to call, a young moose 
bull came striding down the beach to her side. 
He was very young, and the cow regarded him 
dubiously. Glancing past her, he caught sight 
of Red Calf, a stocky figure, much shorter but 
much heavier than himself. Aflame with jealousy, 
but at the same time rather contemptuous of such 
an unantlered rival, he lowered his own slim 
antlers, and charged. Red Calf, with a wrathful 
grunt, flung up his tail stiffly and lunged forwards 
to meet this unprovoked attack. With a heavy 
thud the two armed heads crashed together. The 
result was disastrous to the challenger; for instead 
of receiving the shock, as he expected, upon his 
tough, elastic antlers, he got it full upon his fore¬ 
head, his brow-spikes being too wide-set to 
engage his opponent’s stumpy horns. Half 
stunned, he was borne backwards, almost to his 
haunches. Pressing the advantage, Red Calf 
flung him aside, staggering, and prodded him sav¬ 
agely in the flank before he could recover his 
balance. Utterly daunted by this method of fight¬ 
ing—which was not according to his rules—the 
young bull tore himself free and fled in panic, 
with an ugly scarlet gash in his sleek hide. The 
victor chased him as far as the bushes, and then, 
swelling with triumph, returned to his mother 
for applause. To his amazement, however, she 
seemed very far from pleased at his achievement. 


48 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

Her mane on end, she ran at him with a vicious 
squeal. Much offended, he retired up the bank, 
and lay down sulkily among the willows. 

Some hours later, in response to the cow’s 
repeated calls, another wooer appeared. But 
this time it was the same gigantic bull who had 
spent the winter with them. He was more lordly 
and more superbly antlered than ever; and his 
authority Red Calf never dreamed of questioning. 
The great bull, for his part, did not regard the 
youngster as a rival, and showed him no hostility. 
The mother, delighted to have her old magnifi¬ 
cent mate back, forgot her fit of ill-temper. And 
the reunited group, harmonious and contented, 
hung together through the ensuing winter. 

In April, as soon as the snow was gone from 
the open spaces, the great bull went away. For 
several weeks more the cow and her foster son 
roamed and pastured together as of old, in affec¬ 
tionate intimacy. And then, when the woods once 
more were greening in the May sunshine, the cow’s 
mood changed. She grew impatient of her sturdy 
young companion’s presence, and was continually 
trying to slip away from him. Much puzzled, 
he so far humoured her as to keep his distance, 
but he took care never to let her actually out of 
his sight. 

Red Calf was now no longer a calf in any 
sense. He was a particularly fine and powerful 


Wild Adoption- 49 

two-year-old bull. Expert in forest lore as any 
moose, he was nevertheless an alien to the wilder¬ 
ness, driven by needs and instincts which he could 
not understand. The wilderness had no compan¬ 
ionship to offer him save that of his foster mother, 
and this seemed now to be failing him. He was 
unhappy. Vague, ancestral half-memories haunted 
and eluded him. The life of the wilds, the only 
life he could conceive of, grew distasteful to him. 
Though he could not be aware of it, the wilder¬ 
ness was, indeed, his foe, hostile at heart to him 
because his race for ten thousand generations had 
belonged to Man and been stamped with Man's 
impress. It was even now beginning to show its 
enmity. In the end it would have crushed him, 
but only, perhaps, after years of bitter, unmated 
solitude, and savage hates and the torment of 
vain cravings. But the Unseen Powers relented, 
and offered him a noble exit from the ill-suited 
stage. 

And this was the manner of it. There came 
a day when the moose cow, about to become a 
mother again, took refuge determinedly in the 
heart of a dense and dark clump of young fir 
trees. Red Bull knew exactly where she was, 
and having got it into his head at last that she 
wanted to be alone, he reluctantly endured 
her absence from his sight. There in her hid¬ 
ing-place she gave birth to two dark brown 


50 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

moose calves, long-legged, long-headed and un¬ 
gainly like herself. While she was licking them 
and murmuring soft mother sounds to them, a 
huge black bear, still gaunt and hungry from his 
winter hardships, came prowling past the thicket. 
He heard those mother sounds and understood 
them. Pausing for a second or two to locate them 
accurately, he crept up close to the fringing 
branches, gathered his mighty muscles for the 
spring, and crashed in, counting on instant kill. 
But a massive drooping bough which he had not 
marked in the gloom, diverted slightly that deadly 
rush, and the blow of his pile-driving paw, which 
should have broken the mother’s back, merely 
slashed her lean rump as she wheeled nimbly to 
face the attack and fell on the uplifted head of one 
of the calves, crushing out its hardly started life. 

In the next fraction of a moment there was 
another crash, and Red Bull, with a grunt of rage, 
came charging into the battle. His armed front 
struck the bear full in the ribs, jarring the breath 
from his lungs with a gasping cough, and almost 
bowling him over. 

But Red Bull did not understand his dreadful 
adversary’s method of fighting. Instead of spring¬ 
ing back, and fencing for a chance to repeat that 
mighty buffet, he kept at close quarters, pushing 
and goring in blind fury. The bear, twisting 
about, caught him a sweeping stroke on the side 


Wild Adoption 51 

of the head which raked half his face away, and 
then, lunging clear, brought down the other huge 
forepaw on the back of his neck. It was as irre¬ 
sistible, that blow, as the fall of a boulder. Red 
Bull sank upon his knees and slowly rolled over, 
the vertebrae of his neck not only dislocated but 
smashed to splinters. 

But his sharp horns had done their work, pierc¬ 
ing to the bear’s vitals and ripping his ribs open. 
The desperate mother, meanwhile, had been slash¬ 
ing his haunches to ribbons with mad blows of her 
knife-edged hoofs. The bear was in a bad way. 
Whining and choking, he dragged himself off, 
making all haste to escape the punishment of those 
pounding and rending hoofs. The frantic cow 
followed him clear of the thicket, and then rushed 
back to the remaining calf. Quivering with anx¬ 
iety, she stood over it, licking it and nosing it to 
assure herself it was unhurt. And in her mother 
solicitude she had not even a glance to spare for 
the mangled body of her protector, who had so 
splendidly repaid the debt of her long adoption. 


THE KING OF THE FLOES 


So MUCH to be done, so few brief weeks to do 
it in, that the ardent arctic summer was working 
overtime. The long, long months of sunless 
night and unimaginable cold were to be undone— 
the months of black and shrieking storm, of in¬ 
tolerable winds death-cold from the voids of 
space, of intolerable stillness when the ghost-lights 
danced low above the endless, naked ice and death 
of the Roof-of-the-world. The sun, in haste to 
console after his long forgetfulness, was circling 
in the sky throughout the whole twenty-four hours, 
never quite disappearing below the hazy pink 
horizon. Under the unremitting pour of his eager 
beams, icy pinnacles cracked and crumbled; deep 
fissures of ineffable sapphire opened in the ice- 
walls of eternal glacier, and ran with sharp re¬ 
ports along the tumbled fields of the floe. Here 
and there appeared wide patches of green and 
dancing water, with narrow lanes leading out 
to the open sea, where it chafed incessantly at its 
shrinking boundaries. 

Shoreward, low ridges, and raw, jagged teeth 
of rock, black and slate-blue and rust-red, came 
52 


53 


The King of the Floes 

into view above the limitless white desolation. 
Along the southerly bases of the rocks, and in 
every sunward-facing, sheltered hollow, where the 
harsh soil was bare of snow and thawed and 
warmed to a depth of two or three inches over its 
foundations of impregnable frost, a film of light 
but vivid green was springing into hurried life, 
and already starred thick with tiny blooms, pink, 
yellow, and ethereal lavender, all in haste to fer¬ 
tilize and be fertilized, and to ripen their precious 
seeds and drop them back into the mould, ere the 
night of cold should again close down upon them. 
Amid the blooms bustled innumerable tiny flies and 
gleaming beetles, with here and there a flickering 
mite of a butterfly, paper-white or pallid mauve. 
Over the faces of the rocks were spreading stains 
and smudges of pinkish grey and dull greenish yel¬ 
low, where the newborn lichens were reproducing 
themselves in the fecundating radiance. The still 
air was faintly musical with the babble of innu¬ 
merable rills. 

At one point, through some whim of tide and 
current, the ice-floe had drawn quite clear of the 
shore, leaving some three hundred yards of beach 
uncovered. It was a beach ribbed with ice-ground 
ridges of purple-black rock, which now, at low 
tide, held a miscellaneous drift of weeds and dis¬ 
rooted mussels and stranded crustaceans in their 
shallow intervening pools. 


54 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

From behind a jutting shoulder of black-and- 
purple rock came, suddenly and silently, a long, 
slouching, terrifying figure, the great white bear of 
the arctic. His narrow, low-browed snaky head 
and black-tipped muzzle were stretched out 
straight before him and his nostrils quivered as 
he sniffed the clear air for the taint of anything 
that might ease his mighty appetite. Living prey 
he did not expect, at the moment, or the terror 
of the North would not have shown his dread 
shape so openly upon that naked stretch of sunlit 
shore. But for nearly an hour, with the patience 
of all great hunters, he had lain hidden and mo¬ 
tionless among the rocks, hoping that the seals, 
his favourite quarry, might be tempted shoreward 
to bask in this sheltered cove. Balked of this 
hope, he wandered down the beach to see what 
gleanings from the harvest of the tides might be 
gathered in the rock-pools. 

A few mussels and whelks he had already 
scooped up and crunched greedily; a glutinous, 
musky-flavoured squid he had gulped down with 
relish, when he came upon a prize worth his quest. 
It was a big rock-cod, lodged, white-belly upward, 
in a fissure of the ledge. He clawed it forth and 
turned it over exultantly. It was fresh-killed— 
a great mouthful bitten cleanly out of the thick 
of the back. 

Hastily bolting the fish, this wary hunter shrank 


The King of the Floes 55 

down flat upon his belly, making himself as small 
and inconspicuous as possible, and scanned the sea 
beyond the ice with savage, hopeful eyes. He 
knew at once that that bite was the work of a 
seal, of a seal killing eagerly, this way and that, 
among swarming victims, without stopping to 
gather in the booty. 

That seal and his fellows, their hunger glutted, 
might presently come out upon the floe to bask 
and doze in the sunshine. 

Soundlessly as a cloud-shadow, and almost as 
unnoticeably, the bear twisted and crawled his 
way out to the edge of the bright floe, and flat¬ 
tened himself down between two hummocks. As 
soon as he was motionless, he seemed to melt from 
view, so perfectly did he match himself to his 
surroundings. The keenest, most suspicious eye 
would have had to look twice or thrice before de¬ 
tecting, among the greyish and yellowish blurs 
upon the shadowy whiteness, the outlines of that 
sinister form and snaky, black-snouted head. The 
point of blackness, instead of betraying its owner, 
had the effect of making his faint outlines less con¬ 
spicuous and diverting the eye from them. Here 
he lay rigid as if frozen into the ice, hoping that 
one of the expected seals would emerge close be¬ 
fore him, within reach of the lightning stroke of 
his armed paw. If not, then he would wait till 
the seals had floundered out upon the floe, inter- 


56 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

cept their retreat, and probably secure at least 
one victim before they could get back to their 
refuge in the water. 

The bear had lain there in tense expectancy for 
perhaps a dozen minutes when suddenly, just be¬ 
neath his nose, the grey-green sea surged heavily. 
A huge, glistening, rusty black head shot upward, 
almost in the watcher’s face; and he found him¬ 
self confronted by the hideous, tusked and whis¬ 
kered mask of a gigantic bull-walrus. 

The two massive yellow tusks growing down¬ 
ward from the mighty upper jaw of the walrus 
were over two feet in length, straight, gleaming, 
and tapered to a fine point. The long, stiff whis¬ 
kers standing out on each side of the muzzle were 
thick as porcupine quills. The small, steady eyes, 
set deep in the low-crowned skull, flamed into sud¬ 
den rage as they found themselves staring into the 
fierce eyes of the bear. 

For some seconds the two great beasts, thus 
brought so startlingly face to face, eyed each other 
unwaveringly without a movement on either side. 
The bear, in the first wrath of his disappointment, 
itched to slash across that grotesque and defiant 
mask with his rending paws. But his sagacity, 
well trained in the harsh struggle of arctic life, 
restrained him. Presently he shifted his gaze for 
a swift instant, and noted that the surface of the 
sea all about the edge of the floe was dotted with 


57 


The King of the Floes 

other dark and glistening whiskered heads, most 
of them tusked like that of the bull before him. 
He knew that the tuskless heads were those of the 
fat young calves. The walrus herd was coming 
ashore. He reflected that, secure in their strength 
and their numbers, they might grow careless in the 
lazy sunshine, and then, if they thought he had 
gone away, one of those calves might possibly stray 
within his reach. In any case, he had nothing to 
gain but discomfiture if he should remain to try 
conclusions with the giant walrus—who at this 
moment seemed quite ready for the adventure. 

With a throaty snarl the bear arose to his full 
height, turned his furry rump contemptuously 
upon his rival, and stalked off to the beach to dis¬ 
appear among the rocks, as if acknowledging that 
it was useless for him to try to hunt walrus. Im¬ 
mediately the bull heaved his enormous, warty 
carcass higher from the water, hooked his tusks 
over the solid edge of the floe, and with a loud 
grunt, drew himself forth upon the ice, where he 
lay sprawling complacently, to watch the foe’s 
retreat. In five minutes or so, the whole herd, 
following with confidence their invincible leader, 
had lumbered forth upon the floe with noisy 
splashings and gruntings, and were basking their 
uncouth bulks in the genial glow. 

Counting himself, and not without reason, King 
of the Floes, Ah-wook, the giant walrus, in the 


58 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

complacency of his self-trust forgot all about the 
great white bear as soon as that crafty marauder 
had vanished from his sight. And the whole herd 
forgot with him. The only foe whom Ah-wook 
had learned to fear was man—represented by the 
Eskimo, with his swift kayak and deadly swift 
harpoon. For months there had been no sign of 
man in all that region. It was a fitting time, when 
the arctic sun burned so benignly, for the King of 
the Floes to relax his vigilance. 

With ponderous floppings and gruntings, the 
herd scattered all over the ice. Their rough and 
oily-black hides, almost bursting with fatness, glis¬ 
tened in the sunlight. The unwieldy cows, tusked 
like the bulls and almost as ferocious-looking (but 
the tenderest and most devoted of mothers), 
sprawled happily as they nursed their ever-greedy 
calves. These latter, many of them almost as big 
as their mothers, but as yet without tusks, were 
as grotesquely unlovely as the offspring of such 
monstrous parents might be expected to be. As 
a rule, there is some charm or grace or winsome¬ 
ness to be found in the younglings of even the 
clumsiest and ugliest of the wild kindreds. But 
the baby walrus can only be accounted a gross 
caricature of babyhood. 

It chanced that one young cow, less wary and 
more adventurous than her companions, was 
smitten with a whim to try basking on the dry, 


59 


The King of the Floes 

grey, sun-warmed ledges of the beach instead of 
on the ice. With her half-grown calf floundering 
anxiously at her side, she slipped off the floe, and 
with gusty snortings worked her way some twenty 
or thirty paces up the shore till she gained a flat 
ledge which was precisely to her liking. Settling 
herself complacently,—for never before had she 
experienced so warm a couch,—she turned and 
called to the calf, which, finding the rocks uncom¬ 
fortable to travel over, had dropped a few yards 
behind. The fat and flabby youngster squealed 
protestingly, as if to say he was coming as fast as 
he could; and then, seized with sudden fear of the 
strange element upon which he found himself, he 
stopped, and looked back longingly at the safe 
water and the familiar ice. 

At this moment, from behind the nearest shoul¬ 
der of rock a huge white shape burst forth, 
launched itself, with a clatter of iron claws on 
ledge and gravel, across the open, and fell upon 
the unhappy calf. One blow of the terrific mailed 
paw (which looked so furry soft) smashed the 
youngster’s neck, and it collapsed, quivering like 
an enormous mass of dark-brown jelly. In the 
same second the bear seized it bv the head and 
with frantic haste started to drag the prize away 
to some safe refuge among the rocks—for well 
he knew the devotion and the blind fury of the 
walrus mother. 


6 o 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

In spite of the great bulk of the carcass—little 
short of half a ton in weight—the bear handled 
it almost as a fox would have handled an extra¬ 
fat hare. But for all his agility and his tremen¬ 
dous strength, he was not quite quick enough to 
get away with the prize. With a bellowing scream 
of grief and rage, the mother hurled herself 
downward from her ledge, rearing and plunging 
over the rocks at such speed that the slaughterer 
was overtaken before he had gained a score of 
yards. With an angry growl he dropped his booty 
and sprang aside just in time to escape such a blow 
from those pile-driving tusks as would have 
brought his career to a gory end. Circling nimbly, 
as the mother came down upon her flippers at the 
end of her plunge and paused half covering the 
body of her young, he dashed in and sprang upon 
her back, tearing savagely with his murderous 
claws. 

But the cow’s hide was too tough, the padding 
of blubber beneath it too thick, for either his claws 
or his teeth to make much impression upon it. 
He tore a couple of hideous red gashes, indeed; 
but to the maddened cow they were mere surface 
wounds, of as little consequence as a bloody nose 
to a fighting schoolboy. She reared her monstrous 
shoulders again and shook off her adversary, at 
the same time swinging about with such lightning 
speed that she caught him a glancing stroke upon 


6 r 


The King of the Floes 

the rump with one tusk as he scurried out of 
reach. Slight enough it seemed, that blow, but 
it tore away fur and hide, and from its effects 
the bear was to go limping for weeks there¬ 
after. 

Recognizing himself overmatched, but seeing 
that the cow was too engrossed with her dead to 
attempt the vain task of pursuing him, the bear 
sat down on his haunches and surveyed the situa¬ 
tion in a cold fury, his jaws slavering red foam, 
his splendid white coat dishevelled and plastered 
with blood. What he saw was enough to daunt 
the stoutest heart that ever throbbed beneath a 
furry hide. The giant Ah-wook, grunting his 
wrath, was just floundering up from the lip of the 
floe; and on either side of him a line of bulls and 
cows only less monstrous than their chief, their 
whiskers bristling, their vengeful tusks gleaming 
and lunging as the dreadful array wallowed for¬ 
ward. With rather more haste than consisted 
with his dignity the bear made off, limping, and 
climbed to a ridge where he knew no walrus could 
ever follow him. There, well hidden, he lay down 
to lick his wound and to watch what his foes 
might do. 

Seeing their enemy thus routed, the angry herd 
calmed down, and presently turned back to their 
basking on the floe. But Ah-wook came straight 
till he reached the side of the bereaved cow. To 


62 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

his practised eye it was plain at once that the calf 
was dead, and this knowledge he somehow con¬ 
veyed to the mother. But she paid no heed to 
him. She was determined to get her young, dead 
or alive, back to the kind, familiar shelter of the 
sea. Hooking her tusks beneath the lax bulk, she 
lifted and dragged it clumsily till she had got it 
halfway down the slope. Then it fell into a deep 
crevice and jammed itself there in such a way that 
she could get no hold or purchase upon it. Ah- 
wook, though he kept close to her side protect- 
ingly, made no attempt to help her. The young¬ 
ster was dead, and therefore of no more conse¬ 
quence in his eyes. At last, in despair, the mother 
gave up, and made off sullenly towards the floe; 
and Ah-wook followed close behind her, from 
time to time pausing to look back and glare de¬ 
fiance at the lonely line of rocks. 

As he watched his invincible adversaries depart, 
leaving his victim behind them, the bear licked his 
lips in satisfaction and contempt. He was going 
to win, after all. But he was in no hurry. He 
would let the stupid sea-beasts forget their anger 
before he would descend to reclaim the booty. 
He knew the walrus were great feeders. They 
would soon grow hungry, and would betake them¬ 
selves again to the sea to grub for their coarse 
provender on the muddy bottom of the bay. He 
himself was hungry, to be sure; but his appetite had 


The King of the Floes 63 

already waited some time, and could afford to 
wait a little longer. 

As he lay there in the sun, nursing his well- 
founded anticipations, and disturbed only by the 
ache in his wounded haunch, he caught sight of a 
pair of little blue arctic foxes stealthily creeping 
forth upon the beach. Their fine noses wrinkled 
and sniffed hungrily as they caught the taint of 
fresh blood upon the air. Presently they located 
the body of the dead walrus calf wedged in its 
crevice. 

To the cunning little prowlers such a find was 
almost too good to be true. It aroused their 
suspicions. Surely there was a catch in it some¬ 
where. They crept forward with the utmost cau¬ 
tion, glancing about them at every noiseless step, 
and taking advantage of every cranny or boulder 
to conceal their advance. 

At first glimpse of the small intruders the bear 
had given vent to a low growl of annoyance. 
The tiny beasts, of course, could make no serious 
impression on that vast bulk of flesh. They could 
do no more than gnaw away some fragments of 
the tough hide. But like all the hunting beasts, 
the bear was very jealous of his kill, and hated 
to have any other creature, however humble, sam¬ 
ple the feast before he himself had had a chance 
to satisfy his appetite. He restrained himself, 
however, till the foremost of the two foxes was 


64 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

within a foot or two of the body. Then suddenly 
he leaned forth head and shoulders from his hid¬ 
ing-place, and uttered a short, strident snarl of 
menace. 

The foxes cast one look upon the dreadful, 
grinning mask that glared down upon them from 
the ridge, then scurried off respectfully. But as 
soon as they felt themselves safely out of sight, 
they halted, circled about and crept to a place of 
concealment in the very crest of the ridge, whence 
they could command a clear view of the bear’s 
subsequent actions. They considered, not un¬ 
reasonably, that there should be some substantial 
remnants to be picked up after his banquet. 

The bear, meanwhile, was growing impatient. 
The pain of his wound was not improving his 
temper. But the walrus herd still basked com¬ 
placently on the ice, in full view; and their colos¬ 
sal leader, keeping his post on the landward edge 
of the floe, appeared dangerously alert and watch¬ 
ful. The hungry bear felt that there was nothing 
to do but continue the dull game of waiting. 

How much longer his prudence might have kept 
curb upon his appetite it would be hard to say; 
but now an unforeseen factor came into the prob¬ 
lem. Though the vast northern solitudes seem 
so empty, they are nevertheless secretly populous, 
teeming with furtive life; and news of any consid¬ 
erable killing—which must mean food for some 


The King of the Floes 65 

one—travels mysteriously. The wandering airs 
make haste to carry it, and none who receives the 
tidings is left indifferent. 

A pack of half a dozen arctic wolves, long- 
jawed and ravenous, emerged from a deep ravine 
which cleft the ridge, and trotted boldly forth 
upon the beach, sniffing interrogatively. Straight¬ 
way they spotted the rich prize there in plain view, 
jammed in the crevice. And straightway, disdain¬ 
ing craft or investigation, confident in their feroc¬ 
ity and their speed, they swept down upon it at 
full gallop. 

For the patient watcher on the ridge this was 
too much. With a roar of indignation he pro¬ 
jected himself down the slope like an avalanche, 
and reached the body of the young walrus some 
ten paces ahead of the wolves. Standing over it 
on three legs, he turned, with fangs bared and one 
paw uplifted, and faced the pack with a low snarl 
of warning. 

The wolves, well knowing the power of that 
terrific paw, halted abruptly. The leader sat 
upon his haunches, with his tongue hanging out, 
and blinked sagaciously. The rest of the pack 
divided, two to one side and three to the other, 
and encircled their huge antagonist, their eyes 
glinting green, and their jaws slavering. Keeping 
just at a safe distance of a dozen feet, or so, they 
uttered never a sound; and the bear, too, stopped 


66 


Whey Who Walk in the Wilds 

his snarling, and waited. He felt pretty confident 
that, bold though they were, they would not dare 
to close with him; but he was taking no risks. 

And out on the floe, not fifty paces away, the 
walrus lifted their tusked and whiskered heads 
and stared with lazy curiosity. Ah-wook, indeed, 
went so far as to flounder to the very edge of the 
floe, half minded to take a hand in the affair and 
see those puny land-beasts scatter before his onset. 
He feared neither bear nor wolves. But he was so 
secure in his strength and in the armour of his 
massive hide that it hardly seemed worth his while 
to score so cheap a triumph. In the end his in¬ 
dolence conquered, and he was content to watch 
the drama. 

It was the bear, at length, who decided to force 
the issue. Suddenly, like a coiled spring let loose, 
he hurled himself at the leader of the pack, who 
leaped aside like a hare, just in time to save him¬ 
self. At the same instant two of the other wolves 
dashed in and snapped at the bear’s hindquarters. 
The bear, however, had anticipated this very 
move, and his charge upon the leader had been 
merely a feint. Doubling back just as his rash 
assailants reached him, he caught one of them full 
on the side, ripping him open and hurling him 
twenty feet away. The rest of the pack, to whom 
nothing in the way of meat came amiss, promptly 
fell upon the corpse, and devoured it; and the 


The King of the Floes 67 

bear, happy to see them so well occupied, made 
haste to take the edge off his own hunger. Then 
he proceeded laboriously to drag the carcass up 
among the rocks, where he could conclude his meal 
more comfortably. 

And the wolves, grown less ravenous and more 
discreet, followed him at a prudent distance, re¬ 
membering that when he had well gorged himself, 
he would go away somewhere to sleep, leaving 
them to feast at their ease. 

About this time, though the sun shone as be- 
nignantly as ever, a certain restlessness began to 
show itself in the basking herd of walrus. As if 
with one simultaneous impulse, they all began to 
grunt, swaying upon their flippers. Ah-wook 
forthwith forgot his lazy interest in the great 
white bear and the wolves. Whirling his gigantic 
bulk about, he floundered through the herd to the 
farther edge of the floe, and plunged, with a re¬ 
sounding splash, into the quiet green sea. In hot 
haste the whole herd followed him. For perhaps 
a minute the still air was loud with the heavy 
splashings. Then every dark form vanished, 
while the water heaved and creamed along the 
edges of the ice. The feeding-time of the walrus 
had arrived. 

This little bay, as I have said, was compara¬ 
tively shallow, and its bottom, for the most part, 
of rich deep mud, ribbed with flat ledges which the 


68 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

tide-wash kept scoured. It was a fruitful breeding 
place for huge, coarse clams and mussels, and in¬ 
numerable crustaceans large and small. In fact, 
it was swarming with shoal-water life, and hence 
was an ideal pasturage for the herds of the walrus. 
Scattered all over the teeming bottom, the hungry 
monsters grubbed up the mud with their tusks, or 
with the same efficient weapons raked the rock- 
loving shellfish from the ledges, rarely troubling 
to crush the hard morsels between their irresistible 
jaws, but preferring to gulp them down whole, 
shell and all. And if they swallowed quantities of 
mud and small stones at the same time, that did 
not trouble either their undiscriminating palates or 
their incomparably hardy stomachs. Above them, 
as they fed, the sunlight glimmered down greenly 
through the tranquil tide; and the silver-bellied 
cod and hake and pollock, singly or in shoals, 
darted hither and thither in confusion, while the 
fat and sluggish flat-fish—plaice and flounder and 
fluke—disturbed in their feeding on the mud, 
flounced up indignantly and glided off to serener 
pasturage. 

Suddenly among the bewildered shoals of cod 
and pollock appeared a gleaming and terrible 
shape before which they all scattered like plover 
before a goshawk. Some sixteen or seventeen 
feet in length, slender and sinister, and with a 
keen lance about two feet long standing straight 


69 


The King of the Floes 

out from its pointed nose, it came soundlessly and 
with appalling swiftness from out of the great 
deeps. It paid no attention to the panic-stricken 
fish. It hung poised for a second or two above 
the unsuspecting walrus herd, staring down upon 
them with round, blazing eyes as hard as glass. 
Then, having selected as the most manageable 
prey a very young calf which clung close to the 
mother’s side as she nosed in the mud, it gave 
one screwlike sweep of its mighty tail, shot down¬ 
ward, and drove its sword clean through the 
youngling’s tender body, cleaving its heart. 

Ordinarily, the tactics of the giant swordfish 
would have been to bear away the victim on his 
sword, to be stabbed to fragments and devoured 
comfortably at a distance from the herd. But in 
this case, the fatal thrust having been delivered 
from above, the prize was not impaled in such a 
position as to be carried off conveniently. The 
slayer, therefore, withdrew his weapon, backed 
away a few yards at a lower level, and with a 
short but irresistible rush transfixed the prize once 
more, this time through the flank, in the same 
movement lifting it several feet clear of the bot¬ 
tom. 

The outraged mother, bewildered for a moment, 
now reared herself directly in the slayer’s path, 
frantic and dangerous. The great fish, his sword 
burdened and useless, was compelled to back away 


yo They Who Walk in the Wilds 

and change his course. And at this instant 
Ah-wook, as nimble in the water as a seal, took 
a hand in the murderous game. His presence, 
close at hand, had been ignored by the overconfi¬ 
dent swordfish, who expected no interference ex¬ 
cept from the mother of his victim. As he 
swerved aside, somewhat heavily by reason of the 
burden upon his sword, a colossal black bulk sud¬ 
denly overshadowed him, and two long tusks, 
piercing him through the middle of the back, 
crushed him down irresistibly upon the bottom. 

Although the great swordfish was a good four 
hundred pounds of corded muscle and galvanic 
nervous energy, he was no match for the mighty 
bull walrus, whose weight was over a ton and 
whose cunning far outclassed his own. Neverthe¬ 
less his gigantic convulsions, and the paroxysmal 
lashings of his tremendous tail, enabled him to bear 
his captor along, hither and thither among the 
astonished herd, plowing deep furrows in the mud. 
But not all his frantic writhings could shake loose 
the grip of those inexorable tusks or lighten the 
crushing, suffocating pressure upon his back. And 
all the time Ah-wook—who nursed a special 
grudge against the swordfish tribe by reason of a 
gnarled and ancient scar along his flank—kept 
boring down inexorably with all his weight, and 
rending and grinding within the body of his ad¬ 
versary. The mud was churned up, and the green 


7i 


The King of the! Floes 

tide, for fathoms all about the titanic contest, 
boiled to the surface, brown and frothy and blood- 
streaked. 

Then on a sudden, his backbone wrenched 
apart, the swordfish ceased to struggle and lay 
limp. 

For a few seconds more Ah-wook continued to 
shake him as a terrier shakes a rat, jerking the 
body about savagely as if to glut his vengeance 
to the full. Then, his labouring lungs warning him 
that it was time to take breath, he withdrew his 
tusks and shot up to the surface. Here he lay 
floating for a minute or two, deeply drinking in 
the vital air; and presently the water all about 
him was dotted with the staring heads of his fol¬ 
lowers. Next, floating belly upward, appeared 
the long, mangled body of the swordfish, the calf 
still firmly impaled upon its sword. Ah-wook 
grunted scornfully at the sight, raised himself 
high in the water to glare about him as if in chal¬ 
lenge to other adversaries, and at length led the 
way in triumph back to the floe, confirmed in his 
kingship both by sea and by land. 


BILL 


i 

The wide river, gone shallow in the midsummer 
heats, ran sweetly under the starlight, babbling 
among its long sand-bars and chafing with a soft 
roar against the ragged, uncovered ledges. The 
steep and lofty shores, at this point some four 
hundred yards apart, were black with forest to 
their crests. From a still pool close inshore 
sounded sharply the splash of a leaping salmon. 

Presently from behind a dark promontory 
about a mile downstream came a muffled, rhyth¬ 
mic, throbbing noise, accompanied, as it grew 
louder, by a heavy splashing. A few moments 
more and a white steamboat, her flat sides dotted 
with lights from the cabin windows, rounded into 
view. She was a stern-wheeler—in river parlance 
a “wheelbarrow boat”—propelled by a single 
huge paddle-wheel thrust out behind her stern. 
Flat-bottomed like a scow and of amazingly light 
draught, she drew so little water that the river 
men used to declare she would need only a heavy 
dew to enable her to navigate across the meadows. 
Driving her way doggedly upwards against the 

72 


Bill 


73 


stiff current, she puffed and grunted like some 
gigantic animal, and red sparks from her wood- 
fed furnace streamed from the top of her lean 
black funnel. Her captain was driving her at 
top speed, because the river was falling so rap¬ 
idly that he feared lest he might get hung up for 
lack of water in the channel before reaching his 
destination, which was yet a good day’s journey 
distant. 

In the long, lamp-lit cabin upstairs the few 
rough-clad passengers were smoking and playing 
cards, or dozing as well as they could on the stiff 
chairs, while a buxom, red-haired girl heroically 
strummed Moody-and-Sankey hymn-tunes on an 
unmelodious piano. There was no sleeping ac¬ 
commodation; for the old Forest Queen, except 
under stress of circumstances like the present, was 
wont to do all her journeying by daylight. But 
the passengers were not grumbling. All they 
wanted was to arrive—not to be hung up, by the 
shrinking of the stream, on some sand-bar in the 
heart of the wilderness. They knew the anxious 
captain was making good time, and they were all 
in good temper. 

All, with one exception. Down on the lower 
deck, in the wide space between the furnace door 
and the bows, among piled freight—boxes of 
smoked herring, kegs of molasses, cases of mis¬ 
cellaneous groceries, dry-goods, and hardware— 


74 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

was tethered an immense, long-haired, greyish 
brown goat, with an imposing beard hanging from 
his throat and a pair of formidable horns sweep¬ 
ing back from his massive forehead. This digni¬ 
fied-looking passenger was in a very bad temper 
indeed. His wishes had not been consulted in 
regard to the journey he was making. He had 
been hustled on board by the lusty deck hands 
with cheerful and irresistible familiarity; and he 
had had no chance whatever to avenge himself 
upon any one of them. He stood glowering, with 
wrath in his heart and scorn in his great, yellow, 
supercilious eyes, at the sweating firemen and the 
roaring, blazing mouth of the furnace beneath the 
boiler. The glare and the windy roar of the red 
flame, the loud pulsing of the wheel, the cease¬ 
less vibration of the straining boat, all the inex¬ 
plicable strangeness of the situation into which 
he had been so rudely thrust, filled him with un¬ 
easiness, indeed, but had no power to shake his 
defiant spirit. 

The captain of the Forest Queen was a 
skilled river man, his intrepidity wisely tempered 
with discretion. But long immunity from accident 
had produced the usual effect. The ancient prov¬ 
erb of the pitcher that goes too often to the well 
is apt to justify itself at last. Confident in his 
boat and in his skill, absorbed in his determination 
to beat the river, he forgot how the drought had 


Bill 


75 


been drying up not only the river but the long- 
seasoned upper timber of the Forest Queen; he 
forgot the sparks which his over-driven furnace 
was vomiting from the funnel. One after an¬ 
other they caught, and clung, and gathered fresh 
vitality, and began to gnaw their way along the 
cracks in the parched timbers of the cabin roof. 
Thin, vicious red lines began to show themselves. 
A shift in the channel, a slight veering in the 
course of the boat, brought a draft along the 
cracks, and the furtive red lines leaped to life. 
Then, with startling suddenness, the whole after 
section of the cabin roof burst into flames. 

Pandemonium broke loose. The shrill, tin- 
throated bell rang frantic signals. The hoarse 
steam whistle hooted and hooted. The one, in¬ 
adequate length of lire hose—used for flushing 
the lower deck—was dragged aloft with shouts, 
and its puny stream spurted into the struggle. 
Brimming and splashing deck buckets were passed 
up the companion and emptied futilely at the 
mocking monster which seemed as if it had just 
swooped aboard out of space to overwhelm and 
devour its prey. 

The battle was lost even before it was well 
begun. The old boat was as dry as a match box, 
and blazed riotously. The passengers in the cabin 
snatched up their belongings, flung themselves 
down the companion, and crowded forward as 


76 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

far as possible from the already scorching heat. 
The captain, seeing his boat was doomed, headed 
her about and ran her up as high as he could 
upon a long sandspit which jutted out from the 
shore a couple of hundred yards below. He 
would at least save something of the cargo. 

The passengers, with their grips and bundles, 
jumped from the bows to dry land, ran up the 
slope, and stood to watch the conflagration. The 
crew began feverishly tumbling the freight over¬ 
board and dragging it up the sand. The goat, 
who was by this time beginning to get alarmed, 
stamped impatiently and gave utterance to a loud 
bleat. One of the deck hands, crying, “We ain’t 

goin’ to forgit you, Bill, you old b-!” ran 

up, seized him by one horn, slipped the tether 
from his collar, dragged him to the side, and 
gave him a friendly kick on the rump to hasten 
his departure. 

Bill sprang into the air, landed lightly on the 
sand, and whipped about like a flash, with low¬ 
ered head, to avenge the insult to his dignity. 
But his rude rescuer was still on board, far out 
of his reach. Another of the deck hands, how¬ 
ever, was close by, with his back to him, just 
stooping to lift a bale of blankets. The mark 
was irresistible. With a snort of indignation Bill 
launched himself, struck the unsuspecting man 
fair on the broad seat of his breeches, and sent 



Bill 


77 


him sprawling headlong into a pile of boxes. 
The man picked himself up with a volley of re¬ 
marks which would make the printer’s ink blush 
red, and glared around for some weapon with 
which to punish his assailant. But Bill, his honour 
satisfied, was already far up the sandspit, capering 
derisively. At the edge of the bushes which lined 
the bank he turned and stared for a few moments 
at the soaring and roaring flames which filled 
the river valley with wild light, at the wide water 
rippling gold and scarlet past the already half 
consumed wreck of his late prison, at the dense 
brown and orange clouds of smoke billowing away 
slowly on the light night airs, at the confusion 
and turmoil on the sandspit. He had never seen 
anything in the least like it before. He did not 
understand it. And it all annoyed him extremely. 
With a toss of the head he bounded through the 
screen of bushes, and made off, prancing and leap¬ 
ing freakishly, into the black shadows of the 
woods. 

II 

For the moment, Bill had but one idea in his 
head, which was to put the scene of his discom¬ 
fitures and indignations as far behind him as 
possible. From the burning boat there was light 
enough for him to see his way pretty clearly. 
At this point the precipitous ridge which skirted 


78 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

the river was cleft by a steep, rocky, wooded val¬ 
ley leading up into the wild solitudes behind the 
ridge. A tiny thread of a stream, now gathering 
into still pools, now tinkling silverly over the 
ledges in thin films of cascades, meandered down 
to lose itself in the river just below the sandspit. 
Sure-footed and light of tread like all his tribe, 
and exulting in his freedom, Bill took by choice 
the most difficult portions of the always difficult 
path, leaping unerringly from rock to windfall, 
from ledge to slippery ledge, and balancing his 
great bulk of corded muscle as airily as a bird. 
As he ascended the way grew brighter, and the 
now shrinking fire once more came into view 
above the tree-tops behind him. Discontented at 
this, he hastened his flight; and soon, having trav¬ 
ersed the saddle of the pass and lost the stream, 
he turned off sharply along a grassy glade, a half 
dried strip of swamp. A shoulder of the ridge 
behind him cut off all view or hint of the river 
valley, and he found himself swallowed up in the 
starlit, shadowy dark. 

And now, at last, Bill began to feel the utter 
strangeness of his surroundings. The product of 
generations of civilization, he had few of the in¬ 
stincts of his wild ancestors left in his make-up, 
except for his proud independence and his impa^ 
tience of restraint. He had no fear of the dark¬ 
ness—he had no apprehension that it might hide 


Bill 


79 


unknown perils. But an unwonted sense of lone¬ 
liness began to oppress him, and his ebullience of 
spirits died down. Moving noisily hither and 
thither, he cropped the wild grasses, and browsed, 
with interested curiosity, on the leaves and twigs 
of such of the bushes as appealed to his investi¬ 
gating nose. Having made a satisfying meal he 
pushed under some overhanging leafage and lay 
down, looking out upon the starlit glimmer of the 
glade, and calmly, ignorantly, turning his back 
upon whatever menace might lurk in the blackness 
of the forest. 

As soon as he was quiet the vast silence seemed 
to grip him. He had never before been aware 
of such silence absolute, and it presently began 
to arouse within him a deep-buried ancestral in¬ 
stinct of vigilance. His great yellow eyes rolled 
watchfully from side to side, though he knew not 
why, as he was conscious of no dread. His nos¬ 
trils opened wide, questioning the novel scents of 
the forest air. His ears began to turn slowly 
backwards and forwards, straining to catch some 
hint of sound that would relieve the intolerable 
stillness. 

For a long ten minutes or so there came no such 
relief; for all the small, furtive life of the forest 
had been stilled apprehensively by the intrusion 
of this noisy, mysterious-looking stranger. The 
rule of the wild was “When in doubt don t 


8 o 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

stir!” Then, in a little while, these creatures of 
short memory forgot their fears, forgot even the 
intruder’s presence. The tiny feet of the wood- 
mice once more scurried faintly among the dry 
spruce-needles; and a chorus of tiny squeaks pro¬ 
claimed a disagreement over some captured moth 
or beetle. Bill’s ears turned approvingly towards 
the sound, but his unpractised vision failed to 
make out the authors of it. The elusive noises 
stopped abruptly,—and a pair of small, sharply 
flaming eyes, set close together and near the 
ground, floated swiftly into view. They met Bill’s 
wide-eyed, interested stare with savage defiance. 
Behind the eyes Bill presently made out the slim, 
lithe, snaky form of a weasel. Sensing the venom¬ 
ous hostility of the malevolent little prowler, he 
shook his horns and gave a loud snort of con¬ 
tempt. The weasel slipped away into the darkness 
as soundlessly as it had come, in search of a hunt¬ 
ing-ground not pre-empted by this big mysterious 
stranger. 

Not many moments later there came a light 
and muffled pitpat of leaping feet, and Bill saw 
three “snow-shoe” rabbits emerge into the glade. 
They sat up on their hind-quarters, ears erect, and 
stared about in every direction with their foolish 
bulging eyes. Then they fell to gambolling as 
light-heartedly as children, chasing and leaping 
over each other as if quite forgetful of the fact 


Bill 


Si 

that life, for them, was one incessant game of 
dodging death. As he watched their play, Bill 
began to feel more at home. He had seen rabbits 
—tame rabbits—before, lots of them; and though 
he had always hitherto regarded this tribe with 
toplofty indifference, he now felt distinctly 
friendly to them. They called up pleasant mem¬ 
ories and cheered the solitude. He even had a 
fleeting impulse to jump up and prance and gam¬ 
bol with them; but his instinct warned him that if 
he tried it they would take alarm and vanish. He 
did not want them to go, so he kept quite still. 

Then a startling thing happened,—startling 
even to such unroutable self-possession as Bill’s. 
From the blackness of an alder-thicket just oppo¬ 
site, a shadowy shape, almost as big as Bill him¬ 
self, shot into the air, with a harsh sound which 
seemed to paralyze the little players for an instant. 
In that instant one of them was struck down by a 
broad, keen-taloned paw. Its dying scream seemed 
to release its two companions from their trance of 
terror, and they bounded off into the woods. 

The slayer, a big Canada lynx, almost as long 
in the body as Bill himself, but much slighter in 
build, lifted his round, tuft-eared snarling face and 
stood, with one paw on his prey, glaring about 
him triumphantly with moon-pale, coldly savage 
eyes. But he crouched again instantly, laying back 
his tufted ears and baring his long white fangs, as 


82 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

he found himself looking into the large, inscruta¬ 
ble eyes of Bill, who had risen to his feet, gazing 
at him from beneath the branches. 

Besides bitterly resenting the attack upon his 
little friends, the rabbits, Bill instinctively, on his 
own account, loathed the great lynx at sight. He 
had always had an antipathy to cats; and this, in 
his eyes, was just a gigantic and particularly 
objectionable cat. 

For the fraction of a second the lynx stood his 
ground, ready to battle for his prey. Then the 
strangeness of the apparition, and of the manner 
of its attack, daunted him. He shrank back and 
sprang aside. But his delay had been a mistake. 
He was not quite quick enough. Bill’s iron front 
caught him far back on the flank,—not, indeed, 
with full force, but with emphasis enough to send 
him sprawling. With a yowl of dismay he scram¬ 
bled to his feet and fled ignominiously, the hairs on 
his stub of a tail standing out like a bottle-brush. 
Bears and wolves he knew; the antlered stag and 
moose-bull he understood; but Bill was a phenom¬ 
enon he could not account for, and had no stomach 
to investigate. 

Quite satisfied with his swift and easy victory, 
Bill had no thought of trying to follow it up. He 
stamped two or three times with his slim fore¬ 
hooves, as he stared after the enemy’s flight, then 
he turned and sniffed inquiringly at the mangled 


Bill 


83 

rabbit. The smell of the fresh blood struck a 
kind of horror to his heart. He drew back, snort¬ 
ing and shaking his head. The place grew sud¬ 
denly distasteful to him. Then, forgetting his 
dignity, he went bounding away down the glade, 
deeper and deeper into the forest, till the unpleas¬ 
ant impression faded away as his veins ran warm 
with the effort. At length, somewhat breathless, 
and weary from his crowded experiences, he snug¬ 
gled down against the foot of a mossy boulder and 
went comfortably to sleep. 

In the chill of a pink and silvery dawn he woke 
up, sprang to his feet, and gazed about him at the 
unfamiliar scene. Dew lay thick on the grass and 
moss and leaves. White wisps of mist coiled 
thinly in the narrow open glades. Down the dim 
corridors between the tree-trunks, it was still grey 
dusk; but the high tops of the light green birches 
and the dark green firs and hemlocks were touched 
with rosy light. He fell to browsing contentedly; 
and when his appetite was satisfied he pushed on, 
urged partly by the innate curiosity of his race, 
partly by a craving for some place that might give 
him the sense of home. The freedom and soli¬ 
tude of the wilderness were all very well in their 
way, but the need of something different was bred 
in his very bones. 

As he went he cropped a mouthful here and 
there, following his incorrigible habit of sampling 


84 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

everything that was strange to him,—except toad¬ 
stools. Of these he harboured an inherited sus¬ 
picion. He would sniff at them, then stamp them 
to bits with every mark of hostility. Presently he 
noted the big grey papery globe of a wasps’ nest, 
hanging from a branch just above his head. In that 
hour of numbing damp and chill not a wasp was 
stirring abroad. To Bill the nest looked like a 
ball of grey paper. Among other more or less 
edible things he rather liked paper. And he 
knew nothing about wasps. He reached up and 
took a good bite out of the conical bottom of the 
nest. 

With a startled bleat of pain he spat out the 
fiery morsel, bucked about three feet into the air, 
and struck violently at his muzzle with one nim¬ 
ble forehoof. At the same moment half a dozen 
white-hot needle-points were jabbed into his nos¬ 
trils. He heard, but gave no heed to, a sudden 
loud and vicious buzzing. Fortunately for him 
the furious little “yellow-jackets” were too slug¬ 
gish with the cold to be very active on their wings. 
Two or three more spasmodic leaps through the 
thick undergrowth bore him clear of their ven¬ 
geance. But their scorching punishment he car¬ 
ried with him. For a few moments he rooted 
wildly in the damp moss. Then, bleating shrilly 
with rage and fear and torment, he went tearing 
through the wood till he chanced upon a little 


Bill 


35 


pool where the water bubbled up ice-cold from its 
source in the heart of the hills. Into this he 
plunged his tortured muzzle up to the eyes, and 
somewhat eased the anguish. 

Bill’s flesh was healthy, and his system strongly 
resistant to such poisons as those of insects or 
snakes; so in a comparatively short time he was lit¬ 
tle the worse except for a tenderness which led 
him to choose only the most delicate provender. 
Somewhat later in the day he caught sight of an¬ 
other of those harmless-looking pale grey papery 
globes, hanging from a branch. He was just be¬ 
ginning to recover his customary disdainful mood 
and bearing; but his self-confidence vanished like 
a pricked bubble and he fled in a panic, not pausing 
till he had put a mile or more between himself and 
the dreadful object. 

This experience, though bitter, was worth the 
price, for it saved him, on the following day, from 
a yet more bitter and disastrous one. As he wan¬ 
dered on through green-and-brown forest aisles, 
following his vague quest, he was suddenly con¬ 
fronted by a clumsy-looking pepper-and-salt col¬ 
oured animal, squat and lumpy in build, and about 
the size of a very large rabbit. The creature had 
a short black face with a blunt nose and little bad- 
tempered eyes. At the sight of Bill it paused, its 
fur suddenly stood up all over till it looked twice 
its proper size, and its colour changed to a dirty 


86 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

yellowish white with a blackish undertone. Then 
it came straight on, in its slow, heavy crawl, 
squeaking and gnashing its yellow teeth crossly, 
quite unimpressed by Bill’s bulk and his imposing 
appearance. Had he been in his ordinary unchas¬ 
tened temper Bill would have resented this pro¬ 
cedure at once. He would have promptly butted 
the presumptuous little stranger from his path. 
He would have got his face, his nose, his eyes, 
stuck full of deadly porcupine quills, so barbed as 
never to come out but to work their way steadily 
inwards. He would have gone staggering about 
in blind torment till death came mercifully to re¬ 
lease him; and this chronicle of his adventures 
would have come to a melancholy end. 

As it was, however, Bill was filled, at the mo¬ 
ment, with a wholesome suspicion of what he did 
not understand. He certainly did not understand 
a creature which could grow to twice its size in 
the course of a second. He eyed it with curiosity, 
not unmingled with apprehension, till it was within 
two or three feet of him. Then he discreetly 
stepped aside. And the porcupine waddled slowly 
past, grunting and squeaking to itself, too indif¬ 
ferent, or too sluggish of wit, apparently, even to 
wonder what sort of being Bill might be. 


Bill 


87 


hi 

On the following evening, soon after sunset, 
Bill came out suddenly upon the bank of a small 
river, rippling and murmuring over its gravelly 
shoals. The wide sky was tender with a soft, vio¬ 
let light, and musical with the silver twang of the 
high-swooping night-hawks, hunting gnats in the 
quiet air above the tree-tops. Two or three early 
bats were already zigzagging erratically above 
the bright water, and the trout were leaping in 
the smoother reaches of the stream. To Bill this 
was a most comforting change from the gloom and 
stillness of the forest. The naked strip between 
the current and the bank,—now sand, now gravel, 
now naked, sun-warmed rock—was pleasant to his 
feet. He sauntered on hopefully downstream, 
browsing along the bushy edge of the bank as he 
went, till darkness had fallen and the sky grown 
thick with stars. Then he settled himself for the 
night on a patch of warm sand beneath the pro¬ 
jecting roots of a half undermined maple, more 
content than he had been at any time since he had 
been so rudely dragged from his subservient flock 
and his old, familiar pasture. 

The next morning about sunrise, while the mists 
were afloat upon the water, Bill rounded a leafy 
point and came upon a sight which thrilled his 
lonely heart deliciously. A slim young doe, light- 


88 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

limbed and stepping daintily, came down to the 
river’s edge to drink. In colour she was of a deli¬ 
cate, ruddy fawn, with cream-white belly, and a 
clean white patch on her trim stern. Bill felt at 
once that there was some far-off kinship between 
her tribe and his; and however remote, he yearned 
to make the most of it. Holding his great head 
high, and approaching with delicate, mincing steps 
so as not to startle the fair stranger, he gave ut¬ 
terance to a harsh bleat, which he meant to be the 
very last word in caressing allurement. The doe 
jumped as she lifted her graceful head, and stood 
staring at Bill with wonder and question in her big 
dark, liquid eyes. She knew at once that he was 
not hostile; but he was an amazing apparition, 
and she was intensely curious. How ugly he seemed 
to her, with his coarse shaggy coat, long, bearded 
face, and stout horns sweeping back from his 
heavy brow! A puff of air brought his scent in 
her direction. Her fine muzzle wrinkled with dis¬ 
taste, and she sidled away a few paces. But her 
curiosity held her from flight. 

His ardour stimulated by this coy withdrawal, 
Bill fell to curvetting and prancing, rearing on his 
hind legs, tossing his horns, showing off to the best 
of his powers as he drew nearer and nearer. He 
was careful not to be too hasty, though he was 
confident that his bold and virile charms could not 
fail of their effect. They were effective, indeed, 


Bill 


89 

but by no means as he fancied. Not thus was the 
slim doe desirous to be wooed. She stood her 
ground till he was within a dozen paces of her. 
Then, her curiosity quite satisfied, she whisked 
about on her dainty, pointed hooves, gave a dis¬ 
dainful flirt of her little tail, and went bounding 
away up the bank and over the bushes in prodi¬ 
gious leaps that carried her twenty-five feet at a 
time. 

With a bleat of piteous appeal Bill raced after 
her. But not for long. In a few seconds she 
had vanished utterly. With downcast mien Bill 
dropped the vain pursuit and moved heavily back 
to the river. Sore at heart he sniffed for a while 
at her light footprints. Then he continued his 
journey downstream. As he went, his disappoint¬ 
ment gave way to anger. He had been scorned 
and flouted shamefully. Not so would his lordly 
advances have been treated by his admiring little 
flock in the old home pasture. His wrath at last 
gave way to homesickness, and he felt very sorry 
for himself. When, some hours later, a big fox, 
crossing his path, paused to stare at him with lively 
interest, he thought it was a yellow dog and trotted 
forwards playfully, anticipating a rough-and- 
ready game of tag. Such games,—none too ami¬ 
able, indeed, but with small hurt to either side,— 
he had often indulged in with the dogs of his 
native village. The fox, however, whisked off up 


90 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

the bank with a snarl and disappeared. Bill con¬ 
tinued his journey morosely. In the wilderness no¬ 
body loved him. Was it possible that he had 
made a mistake in parting company with those im¬ 
pertinent but not unfriendly river men whom he 
had left beside the burning boat? For a moment 
he was tempted to turn back and look for them; 
but the impulse faded out as his attention was 
caught by the sudden shrill clamour of a squirrel 
showering abuse at him from a branch overhead. 
It was a familiar sound and he went on with more 
hope. 

Late that evening it chanced that a vagabond 
Indian, poling his way up-river in his birch canoe 
from the far-off settlements, had landed, pulled up 
his light craft, and made camp just a few hundred 
yards below the spot where Bill, in a deep cleft 
in the bank, had settled himself for the night. This 
Indian, unlike most of the men of his shrewd 
breed, was rather a simple-minded rascal, shiftless 
and thieving, fuddled with drink when he could 
get it and always something of a butt both in his 
native village far upstream and in the settlements 
where he was wont to sell his baskets. It was 
strictly against the law to sell spirits to the In¬ 
dians; but on this last visit “Poke,” as he was 
called derisively, had found a dishonest trader, 
who had obligingly accepted all his basket money 
in return for a few bottles of fiery “Square Face.” 


Bill 


9i 


Already mildly “oiled,” though his task of pol¬ 
ing against the stiff current had forced him to be 
moderate, Poke had now but one idea. This was 
to indulge himself, free from all distractions, in a 
blissful orgy of fire-water. The night was bland 
and clear. He had no need of a shelter. He did 
not trouble even to unload the canoe. Bringing 
ashore only his blanket, a hunk of bread, and two 
of his precious, square, black bottles of gin, he 
spread the blanket at the foot of a steep rock 
and hurriedly lighted his little camp-fire. Then, 
squatted beside the companionable blaze, with a 
grunt of luxurious anticipation he dug out the cork 
with his sheath-knife and took a generous draft 
of the raw liquor. 

Alternately munching chunks of bread and 
drinking avidly from the black bottle, Poke was 
soon in a condition when the world seemed to him 
a glorious place. Cold, hunger, pain, toil, weari¬ 
ness were things which had never been and never 
more would be. Rocking himself slowly on his 
haunches and occasionally muttering quietly, he 
stared into the little fire, feeding it from time to 
time with dry sticks till his copper-coloured, fool¬ 
ishly grinning face glowed in the dancing of the 
flame. 

Suddenly a sharp sound of footsteps on the 
gravel at the other side of the fire made him look 
up, stupidly enraged at the interruption. All he saw 


92 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

was Bill’s great horned and bearded head, with 
the big yellow eyes aglare in the firelight, gazing 
at him fixedly from around the corner of the rock. 
Never before had he seen such a head, such awful 
blazing eyes. But he had dreamed of something 
like it, after listening to the priest’s description 
of the hell that awaited evil-doers. His fuddled 
brain leaped to the conclusion that this was 
none other than the Devil himself, come to snatch 
him off to eternal torment. With a yell of horror 
he sprang to his feet, hurled the bottle—now 
quite empty—at the dreadful vision, thrust off and 
fell into his canoe, and went paddling frantically 
downstream. It was not the direction he wished 
to go in, but it was the quickest path of flight. 

Bill, who had come with the most friendly in¬ 
tentions, seeking human company and hospitality, 
had jumped back into the shadows with a startled 
snort as the bottle crashed loudly on the rock be¬ 
side his head. He came forth again at once, how¬ 
ever, stared after the fugitive for a moment, and 
then stepped around to examine the little fire and 
the abandoned blanket. Finding a crust of the 
bread left, he joyously devoured it. He seized the 
blanket and tried to toss it in the air; but as he 
was standing upon it with his forefeet it resisted 
him. This excited and amused him, and he pro¬ 
ceeded to have some fun with it, enjoying himself 
immensely. 


Bill 


93 


The frightened Poke, daring at last to glance 
back over his shoulder, was horrified to see a black 
horned shape, looking to him as big as a horse, 
dancing diabolically about the fire, and flapping an 
awful, dusky wing. In his panic he threw over¬ 
board his last bottle, and it was months before he 
would taste another drop, or steal so much as a 
potato. 

Tiring at last of his antics with the blanket and 
cheered by a feeling that he had once more come 
in contact with humanity, Bill lay down beside the 
rock and gazed at the dying fire until he fell 
asleep. 

It was early in the following afternoon when 
Bill came upon the first signs of human habitation 
in the wilderness. Forced by a deep and still bay¬ 
ou, or backwater, to turn his steps far inland, he 
traversed a low ridge clothed with beech-trees, 
and saw before him a pleasant valley, with the 
roofs of a log cabin and a low barn showing in the 
distance. There were several wide patches of 
roughly tilled clearing, with blackened, half-burned 
stumps sticking up through the crops of potato 
and buckwheat. Immediately before him was a 
very crude but substantial snake-fence of brush¬ 
wood and poles, enclosing a rugged pasture. And 
in that pasture was a sight that rejoiced his 
soul. 

Among the low green bushes and grey boulders 


94 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

five sheep were feeding—two white ones and 
three black. These latter, called black by courtesy, 
were rather of a rusty brown, with black head and 
legs. Bill was acquainted with sheep, and had al¬ 
ways recognized them, condescendingly, as hum¬ 
bler and uninteresting kin to the aristocratic tribe 
of the goats. But all the sheep he had seen hith¬ 
erto had been white ones, very fat, and woolly, 
and futile. These three brown ewes, leggy and 
nimble, reminded him of his own light-footed 
flock, and his heart went out to them. But his ex¬ 
periences in this strange land had taught him cau¬ 
tion. He was afraid that unless he should make 
his advances gently, these altogether desirable 
creatures might vanish, as the doe had done, and 
leave him again to his loneliness. 

The sheep were pasturing at some distance to 
his right near a corner of the fence which was 
fairly overhung by dense forest. He would go 
over and try talking to them nicely through the 
fence before thrusting his company upon them in 
his usual swaggering way. He was quick to learn, 
was Bill, and this time he was not taking any risks. 
He moved as quietly, now, through the under¬ 
brush as if he had been born to it. 

Bill had almost reached the point he was aiming 
at, when an appalling thing happened. One of the 
brown ewes was lying down, peacefully ruminat¬ 
ing, quite close to the fence, and with her back to 


Bill 


95 


it. Nothing was further from her simpie mind 
than any possible peril. Suddenly a great black 
shape seemed to drop over the fence just behind 
her and fall forward upon her. In the next instant, 
as she jumped to her feet with a terrified “ baa-a-a ” 
a mighty paw descended upon her and she sank 
down again, with her back broken. The shaggy 
bulk of her slaughterer almost hid her from view 
as his jaws fixed themselves greedily in her throat. 
The rest of the flock raced down the pasture with 
wild bleatings. 

It required no previous knowledge of bears to 
inform Bill that this black monster would be a 
terrible, a deadly, antagonist. But his bold heart, 
almost bursting with rage, took no account of the 
odds. Already in his sight those ewes were his. 
With one magnificent bound, barely touching the 
top rail, he was over the fence. In the next he 
launched himself, head down. With all his weight 
and all his fury behind it, his iron front struck the 
bear in the most sensitive part of the flank, just 
behind the ribs. 

With a gasping cough the bear, caught unpre¬ 
pared, rolled clear of his victim. He was dazed 
and breathless for a second; but before his amaz¬ 
ing assailant could repeat the stroke he recovered 
himself. Crouched back on his haunches, his little 
furious eyes fixed upon the foe with the wariness 
of a trained boxer, he held one great iron-clawed 


96 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

paw uplifted in readiness for a blow that should 
settle the fight. 

Bill was a crafty fighter as well as a daring one. 
He had danced back some paces, for room to 
gather momentum. He was just on the point of 
charging again when he grasped his adversary’s 
tactics. He had seen what that mighty paw could 
do. He leaped to one side, and dashed in from 
another angle. But the bear whirled nimbly on 
his haunches to confront him again; and he 
swerved just in time to evade the pile-driver 
stroke. It was, in fact, a close shave. 

And now Bill began a manoeuvre which his 
great adversary found most annoying. He danced 
around the bear, thrusting and feinting, and ever 
circling, ever challenging; while the bear was kept 
turning, turning, turning on his haunches till fairly 
beside himself with rage. At last he made a light¬ 
ning rush, hoping to end the matter. But his elu¬ 
sive foe was beyond reach in an instant, as swiftly 
and lightly as if blown by the wind of his rush. 
With a savage growl he sprang back to seize again 
the carcass of his victim. Just as he reached it, 
something like the fall of a hillside struck him full 
on the rump, and propelled him clean over it. He 
had made a mistake in turning his back on Bill, 
even for a second. There was nothing for him to 
do but crouch on his haunches again, and face once 
more his ever-mocking, ever-circling opponent. 


Bill 


97 


The remaining ewes, meanwhile, somewhat re¬ 
covered from their panic, were standing huddled 
together at a discreet distance, watching the bat¬ 
tle with awe. It was plain, even to their some¬ 
what limited perceptions, that the bearded and 
prancing stranger was their champion—a cham¬ 
pion even so bold as to defy a bear. Strange as 
he was, their simple souls admired him. 

At this juncture of affairs a loud and very angry 
shouting turned all eyes—even those of th^ bear 
and Bill—towards the other side of the field. A 
long-legged man in grey homespuns, bareheaded, 
and swinging an axe, came into view over the 
curve of the hill. He had been working in the 
field below the pasture, and had seen the sheep 
running wildly. As he raced with long strides over 
the hillocks, his appearance and his language 
struck panic to the heart of the bear. That saga¬ 
cious beast knew Man. He had no wish to face a 
man alone, still less a man plus Bill. He made a 
wild dash for the fence. Just as he was going over 
it,—the top rail breaking under his weight,—Bill 
caught him again like a catapult, low down in the 
stern, between the thighs,—a devastating blow. 
With a squeal he went over, landing on his snout, 
and fled away through the thickets with no more 
dignity than a scared rabbit. 

The tall man stopped beside the body of the 
ewe and stood leaning on his axe. He was indig- 


98 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

nant and sore at the destruction of his beast; but 
his sporting spirit was more interested in Bill. 

“Some goat!” he remarked with admiring em¬ 
phasis. “Some scrapper! Say, old son, I wish 
we’d had you with us over in France.” 

Bill, immensely pleased with himself, but also 
pleased with the man’s voice, so obviously friendly, 
came prancing towards him, half expecting a car¬ 
rot or a lump of sugar as a reward for his per¬ 
formance. Seeing that no titbit was forthcoming, 
he paused irresolutely. 

“Shoo!” said the man. “Buzz off now, son, 
and join the ladies. See where they’re waitin’ for 
yeh over there. Vll see to this poor bit of mut¬ 
ton.” 

Bill’s eyes and thoughts were already turning 
in that direction, and just as if he had understood 
the man’s words, he trotted over to join the hud¬ 
dled ewes. Uneasy at his strange appearance, they 
shifted and shrank a little; but he approached so 
gently, so diffidently, that their fears were soon 
allayed. A moment more and he was among 
them, rubbing noses with each in turn. Having 
thus accepted his presence, the ewes placidly fell 
to pasturing again, as if nothing unusual had hap¬ 
pened. But Bill, for a long while too happy to 
feed, kept moving about the flock, from time to 
•time shaking his horns at the forest as if defying 
all its perils to trespass on his new kingdom. 


MIXED BREED 


i 

Ghostly white under the flooding spring moon¬ 
light, the sheep lay contentedly ruminating amid 
the old stumps and close-bitten hillocks of the up¬ 
land pasture. A huge black-and-tan dog—long- 
limbed, deep-chested, with longish, slightly waving 
coat and richly feathered tail, like a collie’s— 
came trotting up towards them with a business¬ 
like air. At a distance of some ten paces he 
paused, and, contemplatively waving his tail, cast 
a keen glance over the flock. 

The nearest ewes stopped chewing and eyed 
him with a mild disfavour, prepared to rise and 
move in among their fellows if he should come 
any closer. The rest of the flock appeared to ig¬ 
nore him. They did not fear him. In fact, his 
presence gave them a sense of added security, 
there in this wide, naked pasture field with the 
blackness of the ancient, untamed forest crowding 
close along the frail barrier of zigzag rail fence. 
In a dim way they realized that he was responsi¬ 
ble for their safety—that he was their protector 
99 


IOO 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

from the perils which prowled or lurked in the 
forest shades. 

Of his powers as a protector they had a keen 
appreciation; but in those very powers their deeper 
instincts recognized something from which they 
shrank uneasily. Ancestral memories, formless 
and infinitely remote, kept them on their guard, 
and their noncommittal eyes, lazily half closed, 
followed his every movement as long as he was 
near them. 

Apparently satisfied with his inspection the big 
dog skirted the flock at a brisk trot and ran on to 
the fence. Here he sniffed along the rails for 
perhaps a couple of hundred yards in each direc¬ 
tion, occasionally thrusting his muzzle through 
them between the roughly split poles, and sam¬ 
pling the forest smells with his discriminating nos¬ 
trils. 

The soft night wind drew outwards from the 
forest, across the pasture, and brought him a mix¬ 
ture of savours, all of which his delicate sense 
sorted out unerringly. He smelled the balsamy 
tang of spruce and fir, the faint wintergreen 
breath of the birches, the harsh, chill earthiness 
from a near-by patch of alder swamp. He caught 
the almost imperceptible scent of a hare, passing 
at some distance behind the trees, and cocked 
an ear with interest as it was followed, almost 
immediately, by the pungent musk of a fox. 


Mixed Breed ioi 

Then his nose wrinkled at the taint of a pass¬ 
ing weasel. 

There was no sign or hint anywhere of dan¬ 
ger to the flock. He was not anticipating danger, 
indeed; for the bears and lynxes, at this season of 
plenty and good hunting, were not hanging about 
the neighbourhood of the settlements and court¬ 
ing trouble with the quick-shooting backwoods 
farmers. 

Having thus fulfilled his duty towards his mas¬ 
ter’s flocks, Bran—for that was the big dog’s name 
—continued on along the fence, absorbed in his 
own private affairs. He was smelling for rabbits, 
or weasels, or ground squirrels, or any creature 
alive and active—skunks and porcupines alone 
strictly barred—which might afford him some 
sport and ease a certain restless craving that was 
tormenting him. 

He had gone but a few yards when he picked 
up the fresh trail of a rabbit. Bounding forwards 
eagerly, he dashed around a dense clump of juni¬ 
per—and almost collided with a ewe who was 
standing over her new-born lamb. 

On the instant, the dauntless mother charged 
at him furiously, with lowered head—so swiftly 
that, as he sprang aside, she caught him a savage 
butt on the hind-quarters, nearly knocking him 
over. With a snarl of surprise and wrath he 
leaped out of reach; and the ewe, returning to her 


102 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

little one, fell to licking it anxiously. It was just 
old enough to stand upon its awkward, .trembling 
legs; and she stood over it, alternately coaxing it 
to nurse and stamping defiantly at Bran. 

II 

As for Bran, his first impulse had been to spring 
upon his assailant; but his deepest instinct forbade 
him. To harm her was unlawful. She was part 
of his master’s property, and, as such, sacred. 
At a discreet distance—the rabbit trail forgotten 
—he sat up on his haunches and regarded her. 

In themselves, the ewe and her ridiculous off¬ 
spring were of less than no concern to him; but 
his deep sense of responsibility for his master’s 
property made him uneasy at seeing her so close 
to the fence and the forest. He knew that sheep 
were fools, of course; but she might have had 
sense enough to establish her nursery somewhere 
behind a big stump well down in the pasture, 
where her helpless young would not be a tempta¬ 
tion to every forest marauder. 

He would have liked to drive them both back 
to the flock, or at least to a safe distance from the 
fence; but he knew that the foolish and excited 
mother was in no mood to take a hint. Further, 
it was obvious that the lamb was as yet too feeble 
to walk. Unable to make up his mind what to do, 


Mixed Breed 


103 

he turned his back upon the problem, and sat 
watching the flock, his fine tail spread, slack and 
dejected, upon the dewy turf. 

Obviously a mongrel, Bran was, like many mon¬ 
grels, an altogether magnificent specimen of dog- 
hood. Fine breeds had gone to his making. His 
mother had been a big Yukon sledge dog, part 
Husky, part Newfoundland, with a strong strain 
of the wolf quite near the surface. His father 
had been a cross between collie and Airedale; and 
an expert might have picked out marks of all these 
strong strains in his physical make-up, although 
the blend was perfect, unless, perhaps, for some 
contrast between the intelligent, benevolent 
breadth of his skull above the eyes and the wolfish 
rake of his long, powerful jaws. 

Heredity plays some queer tricks, no less in 
dogs than in men; and in Bran’s temperament the 
distinctive traits of his varied ancestry lay in tan¬ 
gled and often sharply conflicting strands, instead 
of being wrought into a harmonious whole. 

Now, balked in his hunting and in a distinctly 
bad humour, he revealed by the expression in his 
eyes as he sat watching the peaceful flock among 
the moonlit hillocks and stumps, a mood that 
grew to be something far from benevolent. 
Little by little his lips drew back, disclosing his 
long, white fangs. 

Stealthily, almost imperceptibly to himself, a 


104 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

savage impulse began to creep up, itching, into his 
brain. He felt presently a fierce craving to dash 
down among the silly, comfortable flock, and scat¬ 
ter them—to see them fleeing in wild terror before 
him—to slash at their tender, woolly throats—to 
feel the gush of their hot sweet blood upon his 
tongue. Even so would that ancestral timber wolf 
have felt, watching, from behind a bush in the Yu¬ 
kon wilds, the approach of an unsuspecting little 
herd of caribou. 

But Bran never moved. A more dominant 
strain in his temperament woke up, and called 
him sharply to his senses. His fangs vanished 
from view. The greenish fire faded from his 
eyes. A sense of shame chilled his spirit. With 
a guilty air he rose and turned to trot back to the 
farm-yard, his impulse to slaughter even rabbits 
quite extinguished for the moment. 

ill 

He had not gone far, however, on his home¬ 
ward journey, when he was surprised to hear 
from behind him that dull, pattering rush which is 
the unmistakable sound of a flock of sheep stam¬ 
peding. His flock, so quiet but a half minute be¬ 
fore, were tearing across the pasture in wild panic, 
now scattering hither and thither in small bunches, 
now closing again into a huddled mob as they ran, 


Mixed Breed 


105 

only to be scattered apart again instantly, as if 
by an explosion in their midst. 

In the trail of the flight he saw two sheep down 
on their sides, kicking feebly. In the broad white 
flood of the moonlight he saw clearly that their 
throats were torn out. He ran towards them, but, 
for the moment, he ran slowly, in bewilderment 
and indecision. The scene was just his own sav¬ 
age dream of five minutes back come true, and his 
conscience shook him. 

Then he saw the slayer—a tall, slender, bluish 
grey dog, a half-breed greyhound from the next 
settlement, miles away on the other side of the 
ridge. The stranger was just emerging from the 
confusion, having succeeded in cutting out an un¬ 
happy ewe and heading off her frantic efforts to 
rejoin her fellows. 

On the instant Bran’s perceptions cleared. The 
thick mane along his neck lifted with rage, and a 
deep growl rumbled in his throat, as he launched 
himself at top speed across the hillocks. The grey 
marauder was too much engrossed to see the ap¬ 
proaching peril. He was delaying his victim’s 
fate, heading her off ever farther from the flock, 
playing with her anguish of terror as a cat plays 
with a mouse. 

At length, tiring of this play, and fearful lest 
the rest of the flock should escape him, he sprang 
in, with the sure aim of the practised killer. The 


106 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

helpless ewe gave one shrill bleat of despair. Then 
her throat was torn open, and she went down be¬ 
neath her slayer—just as Bran landed upon them 
like a thunderbolt. 

The black-and-tan dog felt a gush of hot blood 
in his face and nostrils; and then his long jaws 
closed inexorably upon the side of the grey beast s 
throat as he jerked him off his prey. 

It was in no sense a fight, this that followed. 
Bran, the heavier and stronger as well as the more 
savage, had secured the one perfect, absolutely 
fatal grip. His opponent could do nothing but 
struggle impotently, with choked^gasping and gur¬ 
glings, striving to keep his feet while Bran wor¬ 
ried him like a rat. In half a minute he was down, 
all four feet in the air, curled together and paw¬ 
ing convulsively; and then in a few seconds his 
body straightened out and fell slack. 

For a little while, with fiercer growls, Bran 
continued to worry the unresisting form. Then, 
scornfully dropping it from his jaws, he lifted 
his blood-stained head and glanced about him 
keenly. Except for the three slaughtered ewes, 
the flock was all together, huddled in a compact, 
trembling white mass at the farther side of the 
pasture, as far as possible from the forest and its 
terrors. 

Feeling that he had fulfilled his duty to the ut¬ 
most, Bran turned about and with his hind paws 


Mixed Breed 


107 


contemptuously kicked a few scraps of turf over 
his victim. Then he trotted home to the farm¬ 
yard, crept into his kennel, and settled himself 
to sleep. 


IV 

It was not out of love for his master, by any 
means, that Bran was so careful to guard that 
master’s property. It was simply a fundamental 
article of the code which he inherited from the 
Newfoundland and collie side of his ancestry. Ben 
Parsons, the big, red-faced, hard-eyed farmer, 
was his master. To Ben Parsons he owed his 
food, his shelter and therefore his loyal service. 
That was enough for Bran. 

There was no question of love, or even of the 
most temperate liking. Ben Parsons was not one 
to inspire, or to desire, anything approaching af¬ 
fection in man or beast. All the stock on his 
farm feared and distrusted him, in spite of the 
fact that they were in the main well treated. He 
had too clear an understanding of his own inter¬ 
ests not to know that good treatment secured him 
good value. From his hired help he got fair 
service, for which he gave fair pay in wage and 
keep, and so he prospered; but no one ever stayed 
long in his employ. 

From Bran he got obedience, but no servility. 
To him the great inscrutable-eyed, huge-eating 


io8 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

dog was well worth his rations and the ten dollars 
that Ben had paid for him as a puppy, for the pro¬ 
tection which he afforded to the farm. 

It was towards noon when Parsons tramped up 
to the sheep pasture to see if all was well with his 
flock, a bunch of high-grade southdowns in which 
he took much pride. Bran accompanied him, not 
trotting at his heels, but ranging about with an 
air of responsibility. 

The flock was pasturing—contentedly, for 
sheep have short memories—near the home fence 
of the pasture. The ewe which had given birth 
to her lamb the night before had rejoined the 
flock with her gawky offspring; but the owner’s eye 
was quick to notice that three were missing. He 
glanced about the field. 

“Seek ’em!” he said sharply. 

Bran pricked up his ears, eyed Parsons inquir¬ 
ingly for a moment, then led him straight to the 
little hollow behind a big grey stump where one 
of the victims was lying. 

To Parsons the sight of the torn throat was 
instant evidence that here was the work of that 
most hated of marauders, a sheep-killing dog. 
There could be no doubt as to who was the cul¬ 
prit. Bran was the only big dog in the whole set¬ 
tlement, the only dog with dangerous blood in his 
veins. 

He turned and looked at Bran, a deadly rage 


Mixed Breed 


109 


seething in his heart and gleaming from his steel- 
hard eyes. Bran, on the other side of the carcass, 
sniffed at it for a moment, and growled and bared 
his fangs as he thought of the other dog. 

Had Ben Parsons had his gun with him, 
Bran’s fate would have been settled on the spot; 
but he had hot even a stick. His big lingers 
clenched viciously, but he was no fool. He was 
not going to tackle a mighty beast like Bran 
naked-handed. He controlled himself, and 
planned vengeance later—a safe vengeance. Bran 
should be disabled by a well-placed shot, and then 
beaten to death, without haste. The matter could 
wait. 

Bran looked up and met his master’s eyes with 
the confident gaze of a commending conscience; 
but as he sensed the hate, the deadly purpose, 
in those cold blue eyes, his own underwent a 
change, and an angry green light flickered in their 
depths. 

But habit, training, the master instinct, con¬ 
quered him. He turned and trotted straight to the 
other victim. Parsons followed, and gave but one 
look, icy now with the rage that was forced to bide 
its time. Hardly pausing, Bran led him on to the 
third victim, with the torn grey body of his slayer 
lying stretched out beside it. With a gesture of 
unutterable scorn, Bran kicked some dirt upon 
the corpse, then moved off a few paces, sat up 


no 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

on his haunches and glared at his master with an 
expression of smouldering hostility. 

Ben Parsons stared down upon that gaunt and 
long-jawed corpse, so terribly mauled, and under¬ 
stood the whole situation. There was no spark 
of generous warmth in his make-up. Even while 
congratulating himself that he had not perpetrated 
the folly of killing such a valuable dog as Bran, 
he nursed a certain grudge against him for not 
having intervened more promptly. He dwelt more 
on the three sheep slain than on the rest of the 
flock saved. 

He set off for the stables, to get a horse and 
drag, in order to haul the carcasses home—the 
sheep to be skinned, the dog as evidence in his 
claim for damages. As he went, he whistled Bran 
to follow him; but the black-and-tan, apparently, 
failed to hear the summons. He was already far 
up the pasture, sniffing along beside the fence for 
the scent of a rabbit. He had no use for Ben 
Parsons at the moment. 


v 

That same night just before moonrise, Bran 
came forth from his kennel and stood surveying 
the wide, shadowy farm-yard, the two big, square 
barns black against the glimmering sky; the long, 
low, open-fronted shed for wood and carts; the 


Mixed Breed 


111 


lean, white-painted frame house; the lamp-lit 
kitchen window close shut against the sweet and 
mild spring air. 

Conflicting impulses warred sharply in his blood. 
For all the comfortable scene he felt a warm af¬ 
fection—a certain sense of proprietorship, almost, 
because he was there to guard it from the un¬ 
known perils of the night. He heard the two 
heavy bay draft horses pawing gently as they 
nosed the fodder in their mangers. They were 
Bran’s friends, and his heart went out to them. 
He heard the soft lowing of one of the cows in 
the home pasture behind the shed. He liked the 
cattle—dull, to be sure, but rather amiable! 

In his veins, however, there was stirring a fever 
that would not be quenched. Into his mouth came 
again the thrilling taste of that gush of hot blood 
from the ewe’s torn throat as he had closed with 
her slayer. He licked his lips and gave an uneasy 
whine. 

At that moment the heavy figure of Ben Par¬ 
sons, pipe in mouth, appeared between the window 
and the lamp, gazing out into the dusk. Bran 
growled softly, with sudden aversion, at the sight; 
and the wolf strain triumphed. He trotted off 
towards the forest, athirst to hunt something, to 
kill something, if only a rabbit. In reality he 
craved a quarry that would struggle, that would 
resist, that he could slake his blood lust upon. If 


I 12 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

only he might strike the trail of one of those splen¬ 
did red deer which he had occasionally seen star¬ 
ing over the pasture fence! 

His way to the forest led him up through the 
sheep pasture. The moon was just rising, red and 
distorted, through the jagged black tops of the fir 
trees on the ridge, casting long, sinister shadows 
across the hillocks. The sheep were lying down. 
He merely glanced at them in passing, for just 
now he had no mind to look after their protection. 

In that moment the picture of the long-limbed 
grey slayer, as he scattered and tore the flock in 
the ecstasy of the chase, flashed across Bran’s 
memory. His jaws slavered with a gust of hor¬ 
rid sympathy and understanding. He realized at 
last that it was sheep he wanted to kill; but not, 
assuredly not, these sheep! These sheep he 
had fought for. They were his own. Let any 
intruder touch them at his peril! 

He trotted straight on, then broke into a run, 
leaped the fence, and plunged into the forest. His 
purpose was now clear to him, and nothing should 
turn him from it! 

In the woods it was dark, except where the low 
moon sent long fingers of elfish radiancy between 
the black trunks and down the silent glades. To 
Bran, going swiftly and without any thought of 
secrecy or stealth, the solitude seemed empty of 
all life; for all the furtive creatures of the wild, 


Mixed Breed 


113 

the savage and the timorous alike, hid themselves 
or froze into invisibility at the approach of this 
redoubtable intruder, who carried with him the 
added prestige of his alliance with man. 

From time to time the scent of some tempting 
quarry would catch Bran’s nostrils, but he was 
too fixed upon his purpose to be tempted. He raced 
on steadily, swishing through the young green 
brakes, crashing over the low blueberry bushes, 
skirting the denser thickets, threading the ancient 
trunks, leaping the occasional windfalls—his long 
and tireless gallop eating up the miles without 
effort. He topped the naked granite crest of the 
divide, spectral white in the pour of the new high- 
floating moon; and swept on down, through whis¬ 
pering groves of young birch and silver poplar, 
into the bosom of the white Ottanoonsis Valley. 

Bran knew of a spacious sheep pasture on the 
lower slopes, where dwelt a white-fleeced flock 
which had lately been guarded by a certain tall, 
grey-blue dog, very swift of foot but fatally lack¬ 
ing in judgment. That dog had trespassed, and 
murdered, and met his deserts. To Bran it seemed 
that there would be a measure of justice, of retal¬ 
iatory vengeance, in visiting the slayer’s crime 
upon the slayer’s own charges. 

But Bran was prudent, for all the deadly lust 
in his veins. The old guardian was dead, indeed, 
but already a new one might have been appointed; 


114 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

and he did not wish to be disturbed in the orgy he 
was promising himself. The new guardian of the 
flock, if there were one, must first be settled with. 
And then—and then—the ecstasy of the chase, the 
slaughter, and the slaking of his fiery thirst! 

Through the rough rail fence he scrutinized, 
long and warily, the empty, bright expanse of the 
pasture, and the flock huddled, peacefully rumi¬ 
nating, beneath the glassy radiance in a remote 
corner of the field. Warily keeping ever in the 
shadows, he made a complete circuit of the field, 
a systematic reconnaissance. 

It was about three o’clock in the morning. All 
was clear. All was quiet. The farmhouse and the 
farm-yard, hidden behind a windbreak of dense 
fir trees, gave no sign of life. In the single strag¬ 
gling street of the settlement village, half a mile 
below, not a window was lighted. There was not 
a sound on the air but the soft rush of the Otta- 
noonsis against the two piers of its wooden bridge. 


VI 

With savage exultation Bran leaped the fence 
and dashed upon the flock. 

For the moment he did no Killing. He was not 
yet quite worked up to it. He craved the fierce 
excitement of the chase; and for a few seconds the 
flock, too astonished to be really frightened, 


Mixed Breed 


115 


merely scattered sluggishly to avoid him. Two 
or three he nipped severely. Their sudden, pit¬ 
eous bleats were not to be misunderstood. Then 
swift panic seized the flock, and they ran, fran¬ 
tically. 

The young lambs, left sprawling and bleating 
behind, Bran ignored. They were too petty game 
for him. Moreover, he would not have touched 
them in any case. His murder lust could not carry 
him so low as that. He pranced among them 
wildly for a moment, just to give the quarry a 
start, and then, with bared fangs and eyes flaming 
green, he tore in pursuit. 

The first that he overtook, a heavy ewe, he 
sprang upon like a wolf. Her knees gave way be¬ 
neath her, her outstretched muzzle buried itself 
in the damp turf—and Bran tore her throat out 
as he had seen the grey dog do. 

Then a strange thing happened to him. With 
none of the ecstasy of gratifying a mad craving, 
the taste of his victim’s blood shocked him back 
to sanity. It was like a douche of iced water in 
his face. He stood rigid, frozen, and stared about 
him like one awaking from a tremendous dream. 
That old wolf forbear of his had at last been 
glutted. The mad fire faded from his eyes. His 
fine tail drooped slowly, and at last went fairly 
between his legs, as a sense of intolerable and un¬ 
pardonable guilt swept over him. 


ii 6 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

With that sense of guilt came fear, which he 
had never known before. He had cut himself off 
from man. Retribution would await him every¬ 
where. Never again could he return to the old 
farm. He whipped about and fled as if a pack of 
devils were at his heels. 

Just at this moment, from behind the fir 
grove, appeared the farmer, the owner of the 
flock. Aroused, too late, by the vague but pro¬ 
longed commotion in the sheep pasture, he had 
seized his gun—which hung ready loaded, on the 
kitchen wall—and run out to see what was the 
matter. Grasping the whole situation at a glance 
in that revealing white light, he took a hasty shot 
at the fleeing Bran. 

It was not a good shot, fortunately. One of the 
big scattering pellets alone caught Bran, with a 
sting like a hot iron, on the side of the rump, just 
as he disappeared, with a startled yelp, over the 
top of the fence. 

Speechless with indignation, the farmer strode 
across the field and surveyed the torn victim and 
the panic-stricken flock. The backwoods vocab¬ 
ulary is rich in varied and biting expletives; but 
words, here, were futile. He had recognized 
Bran, of course. He had already received an en¬ 
ergetic demand from Ben Parsons for the price of 
three valuable sheep, their value being by no means 
understated in the claim. 


Mixed Breed 


117 

“But I’ll git even with Ben for this,” he mut¬ 
tered at last; “him an’ his dawg too, by Godl” 

Into the heart of the densest thicket he could 
find, trembling with shame and smarting from his 
surface wound, Bran slunk and hid himself. The 
spirit of two thousand generations of his ances¬ 
tors—faithful friends of man since the dim ages 
of flint spearhead and cave-mouth fire—whispered 
scathingly in his conscience, upbraiding him for 
his crime. 

He rolled and rooted in the wet moss and moist 
earth, striving to cleanse himself of the blood taint 
which now he loathed. The smart of his wound 
he hardly troubled to assuage, though from time 
to time he would lick at it despondently. What to 
do, or where to go, he had for the time no notion 
whatever. He had become that saddest and most 
aimless of four-foot creatures, a masterless dog. 

VII 

At about half past eleven that same morning, in 
the shade of a wide-branched maple which over¬ 
hung the river bank, Dave Stonor sat on a log 
smoking, and reading a shabby volume, while he 
waited for his kettle to boil. His compact little 
woodsman’s fire was built between two stones 
close by, well in the shadow, that it might burn 
the better. 


118 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

At the edge of the water, some twenty-five 
yards away—for the river had fallen, and there 
was a strip of gravelly beach between the wooded 
bank and the dimpling current—the prow of his 
loaded canoe was drawn up. Halting at the set¬ 
tlement that morning to buy milk and fresh bread, 
he had heard all about Bran’s raid on the sheep 
pasture. Both Bran and Bran’s owner, Ben Par¬ 
sons, he had long known by reputation, though his 
house was nearly forty miles farther up the Otta- 
noonsis; for in the backwoods the minutest affairs 
of everyone are known and discussed for leagues 
about. It is almost as if each man’s—and wom¬ 
an’s—hairs were all numbered. 

When, therefore, Dave Stonor saw a huge 
black-and-tan dog, with a splendid head, emerge 
cautiously from the bushes a little farther up¬ 
stream, and slink, wtih a slight limp, down to the 
water’s edge, he understood a great deal at once, 
and thought rapidly. He loved dogs. He knew 
Bran’s pedigree. He had no liking for Ben Par¬ 
sons. He had never owned a sheep. Bran’s 
crime was more or less venial in his eyes. 

The great dog drank greedily. Then he stood 
gazing across towards the opposite bank, as if 
making up his mind to swim over. 

At this moment Dnve Stonor intervened. 

“Bran!” said he. “Come here!” 

Bran jumped as if shot, turned his head to stare 


Mixed Breed 


119 

at the speaker, and seemed uncertain whether to 
plunge into the stream or dash back into the cover 
of the woods. He stared inquiringly at the small¬ 
ish, motionless figure seated on the log. He met 
a pair of greyish brown eyes, kindly but very mas¬ 
terful, very compelling, fixed steadily upon him. 

“Come here, Bran! Come here, I tell you!” re¬ 
peated Stonor, more sharply. 

There was something in that voice of authority, 
so assured, yet so subtly sympathetic, that poured 
balm upon Bran’s sick and desolate spirit. It gave 
him confidence. It seemed to restore him to his 
forfeited fellowship with man. He had never 
heard a voice like that before. 

He came slowly towards Stonor, but he came 
very humbly, his ears drooping, his fine tail be¬ 
tween his legs. He expected punishment, but he 
came gladly. 

As he approached, Stonor tossed him a lump 
of cold meat. With an apologetic glance, Bran 
bolted it gratefully. Then he crept to the man’s 
knees. 

“Lay down, you bloody murderer!” com¬ 
manded Stonor. 

The dog obeyed at once, comforted to feel that 
he had acquired a master. That master placed a 
moccasined foot gently on his back, rubbed his 
broad, intelligent head, and pulled his ears with a 
decisive roughness. Then, dropping his eyes to 


120 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

some lines in the well-thumbed volume that he had 
been reading, he remarked with the backwoods 
drawl: 

“Must ’a’ took a damn big conscience to make 
a coward of a dawg like you!” 

In reply, Bran gave a small whimper of grati¬ 
tude. He had been pardoned, and accepted. 

By this time the kettle was boiling, but Dave 
Stonor paid no attention to it. He was thinking 
hard. He had tired of the backwoods. He had 
made some money by his work in the lumber 
camps, and saved it. He was on his way down to 
the city, a hundred and fifty miles away. There 
he intended to take train across the continent, and 
go north into the vast Yukon Territory prospect¬ 
ing for gold. 

Bran’s life was forfeit. It would be absurd to 
regard him any longer as the property of Ben 
Parsons—who was no good anyhow. Bran should 
not die. He should go to the Yukon with Stonor. 
What a leader for his dog team! And what a 
friend and companion in the great solitudes! 

Dave Stonor got up briskly, knocked the ashes 
out of his pipe, emptied the kettle, and scattered 
and beat out the fire. 

“We’re a mite too nigh the settlement here,” 
he remarked to Bran, who hung close at his heels. 
“We’ll git right on, an’ stop fur grub a few miles 
farther down.” 


Mixed Breed 


in 


Rearranging the dunnage in the canoe to make 
place for his unlooked-for passenger, he made 
Bran get in and lie down; and he took the precau¬ 
tion to throw a blanket over him. Then he stepped 
delicately into the stern, seated himself, picked up 
his broad-bladed paddle, and started off down¬ 
stream with mighty strokes. 

“Lay still an’ keep quiet!” he commanded 
sharply. “I’m taking you where there ain’t no 
sheep, an’ where there ain’t going to be no temp¬ 
tation to backsliding!” 


QUEEN BOMBA OF THE HONEY-POTS 


i 

In the hot, honey-scented, murmurous dark of 
the bees’ nest, deep-hidden in the bank beneath 
the wild-rose thicket, the burly young queen, 
Bomba of the bumblebees, was seized with a sud¬ 
den inexplicable restlessness. When she had 
emerged, two days before, from her cocoon-cell 
weak on her legs, bedraggled, and dazed by the 
busy crowding stir of the nest, she had been ten¬ 
derly fed with thin honey by the great Queen- 
Mother herself, and cleaned and caressed by two 
or three of her sturdy little bustling worker-sisters. 
But as soon as she was strong enough to look after 
herself, and had found her way to the well-sup¬ 
plied communal honey-pots, she was amiably ig¬ 
nored, as everyone in the nest was working at 
high pressure. She had dutifully fallen to with 
the rest, and found her time well occupied in feed¬ 
ing the ever-hungry larvae in their cells. But now 
this task no longer contented her. For the mo¬ 
ment she did not know what she wanted. She 
went blundering here and there over the combs, 
shouldering the little workers aside, and paying 
122 


Queen Bomba of the Honey-Pots 123 

no heed whatever to the tiny, insatiable mouths in 
the brood-cells. Then, suddenly, her desires took 
definite shape. It was change she wanted, and 
space, and a free wing, and the unknown air. 
With a deep buzz of decision she rushed to the 
big waxen honey-pot beside the entrance of the 
nest, sucked up enough of the thin honey to fill her 
crop with comfort, then hurriedly crawled along 
the narrow tunnel which led to the outer world. 
In her quest for the great adventure she was ob¬ 
livious to the stream of workers which she passed 
on the way. 

At the exit, half hidden by a tuft of grass, she 
stopped short, as the first full glare of daylight 
struck her in the face. For the moment she was 
half minded to turn back into the familiar dark. 
But her sturdy spirit forbade any such ignominy. 
She crept out into the warm grass. Warm scents 
and soft airs encouraged her. She spread her 
wings, and stretched them; and at last, lured by 
the dazzle of sunshine bevond the shadow of the 
bank', she sprang into the air and went winging off, 
with a deep droning hum of elation, into the mys¬ 
terious spaces of green and sheen and bloom. 

As she took wing she was accosted by three or 
four ardent young males of her race—square- 
built, burlv, black-and-orange beaux, hardlv half 
her size but full of energy and enterprise. At this 
moment, however, their eager wooing left her cold. 


124 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

She was set on exploring the new and wonderful 
world which had just been revealed to her. Im¬ 
patiently eluding her wooers she boomed away 
over the sun-steeped meadow, and pounced down 
upon a patch of late-flowering purple clover. Here 
she revelled for an hour or two among the hon¬ 
eyed blossoms, plunging her long tongue to the 
very bottom of the deep and narrow tubes where 
the nectar lay concealed, and disturbing a host of 
tiny foraging flies. From the meadow she flew 
over a tall green hedge, and swung down into the 
many-coloured tangle of an old-fashioned garden, 
where all the flowers of late summer were holding 
a riot of bloom. Over this profusion of riches she 
went quite wild for a time, sampling nectar of a 
dozen flavours and pollen of many varied hues, 
squeezing her broad, black-and-yellow head and 
shoulders into the foxgloves and the snapdragons, 
rollicking about in the wide radiant bowls of the 
hollyhock blossoms, rifling the pale blue campa¬ 
nulas, diving bodily into the Canterbury Bells, and 
giving voice to shrill, squeaking buzzes of excite^ 
ment and impatience whenever she felt her quar¬ 
ters too restricted. Once a tall being, all in white, 
came moving slowly down the garden walk, paus¬ 
ing at times to examine or to sniff at a glowing 
blossom. Bomba circled around the stranger’s 
head several times, in amiable curiosity, and then, 
attracted by a vivid gleam of scarlet, droned off 


Queen Bomba of the Honey-Pots 125 

to the other side of the garden to investigate a 
row of tall poles draped to their tops with flow¬ 
ering runner-beans. 

Late in the afternoon, when the shadows were 
lengthening across the garden and a strange chill, 
such as she had never dreamt of in the home nest, 
began to make the air seem less friendly, Bomba 
flew off to an ancient brick wall which faced west¬ 
ward and was still bathed in sunshine. This wall 
was clothed with rambler roses, pink, white, and 
deep crimson. The mass of bloom was humming 
with life,—with flies of innumerable kinds, with 
green and bronze beetles, honey-bees, slim, dapper 
wasps, and workers, drones and big queens of 
Bomba’s own species. She ignored them all alike, 
happy in her care-free independence. But when 
the chill in the air grew fresher she forsook the 
revels, slipped in under the veil of blossom and 
leaves, and crept drowsily into a crevice in the 
sun-warmed bricks. Here she slept away the star¬ 
lit night, and never emerged next day till the sun 
was high in the blue and the last of the dew was 
vanishing from the garden world. 

As she crawled out upon a crimson rose, and 
stood basking in the sun, her broad velvet bands 
of black and gold richly aglow, she was aware of 
a curiously attractive perfume which was not of 
the flower. It was somehow more living and 
vital, and of more personal significance to herself. 


126 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

It excited her strangely. Presently she became 
aware that it emanated from an attractive drone 
of her species, who was hovering close above her, 
humming persuasively. Of more compliant mood 
to-day than when first she left the nest, she rose 
into the air to meet this scented wooer; and the 
two soared away slowly together, on their mating 
flight, over the gay-hued patterns of the garden. 

Her lover, however, and her interest in lovers, 
being very soon forgotten, Bomba passed the 
brief remnant of the summer in careless vagrancy. 
This was the one time of holiday that her life, 
predestined to toil, would ever afford. For the 
present she had nothing to do but feast through 
the hours of sun, and doze away the hours of 
dark or storm in the shelter of her cranny in the 
brick wall, and all the time, though she knew it 
not, she was laying up strength and substance to 
last her through her long winter’s sleep beneath 
the snow. 

As the honey-bearing blossoms passed away 
with the passing summer, Bomba began to realize 
that a sinister change was approaching, and the 
instinct inherited from a million generations of 
ancestors warned her that her cranny in the brick 
wall would soon be an insufficient shelter. Long 
and earnest search at last yielded her a site that 
seemed suitable for her winter’s retreat. On a 
dry knoll of sandy loam stood a spreading v eech- 


Queen Bomba of the Honey-Pots 127 

tree, and in the light soil beneath one of its roots 
she proceeded to dig her burrow. She did not, as 
might have been expected, choose the sunny side 
of the tree, but rather, in her prevision, the shad¬ 
owed north, in order that the early, deceiving 
warmth of the following spring might not awaken 
her too soon and lure her forth to her doom in a 
world not yet ready for her. 

Not being a very expert digger as compared 
with some of her remote cousins, she spent several 
arduous days in tunnelling a narrow tube about 
four inches in depth. The end of this tunnel she 
enlarged to a circular chamber wherein she could 
curl up comfortably. Here, for the next week 
or two, she spent the chill nights and the wet or 
lowering days, only coming forth when the noon 
sun tempted her. But when the few remaining 
late flowers were all rifled of their honey, and the 
dancing flies were all gone, and the bedraggled 
garden looked sorrowful and neglected, and even 
at high noon the air had a menacing nip in its 
caress, she felt an irresistible drowsiness creeping 
over her. Half asleep already, she crawled into 
her dry, warm burrow, and forthwith sank into 
a slumber too deep for dreams. The days grew 
shorter, the nights longer and darker, frosts slew 
the final valiant blossoms, and at last the snow 
came, silently, and buried meadow, grove, and 
garden far from sight—almost, it would seem, 


128 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

from memory. Wild storms swept over the white, 
enshrouded earth, and savage cold scourged the 
unsheltered fields; but Bomba, in her snug cham¬ 
ber beneath the beech-roots, slept untroubled 
through it all, carrying secure in her fertilized 
ovaries the heritage of the future of her race. 

II 

Not only was the snow all gone, but spring was 
firmly established in the land, before the growing 
warmth awakened Bomba, and she crept forth 
from her chamber to renew her acquaintance with 
the sun. Crocus and narcissus and polyanthus 
starred the brown garden beds; orange-gold dan¬ 
delions made gay the young grass of the meadows, 
the willows along the meadow brook were all a 
cloud of creamy lemon catkins; and the grey old 
sugar-maple which overhung the garden wall had 
burst into a film of aerial rose. 

It was, above all, the creamy fragrant willow 
blooms which attracted Bomba for the moment. 
She would revel among them in the noon-day 
glow, her heavy, booming note rising above the 
soft hum of the myriad lesser bees, and small 
wasps, and many-tinted flies which held riot in the 
scented pollen. But she was still drowsy; and 
every day, after gorging herself luxuriously, she 
would hurry back to her deep chamber under the 


Queen Bomba of the Honey-Pots 129 

beech-roots, and sleep till the sun was once more 
nearing his height. But when spring forgot its 
caprices and melted into summer, she was seized 
with a new and imperious impulse, the impulse to 
found a colony and assume the sovereignty which 
she was born for. Her narrow cell grew distaste¬ 
ful to her, and she fell to searching the open, 
grassy slopes and bushy hillocks for more spacious 
quarters. After a long quest she found, in a steep 
and tangled fence-corner, just what she wanted. 
It was a forsaken burrow of the little, striped 
ground squirrel. 

The burrow was roomy and dry, and the en¬ 
trance to it was by a narrow tunnel about two feet 
long. The only fault Bomba could find with it 
was that it had a back door, another tunnel to 
afford its former occupants a means of exit in case 
of undesirable visitors. Bomba had no need of a 
back door, which meant draughts, so in cleaning 
up the nest she packed the litter into this entrance 
and pretty well stopped it up, intending to make 
it quite draught-proof later on, when she should 
find time to plaster it with leaf-bud gum and wax. 

Meanwhile, in spite of her ceaseless activity, 
she was secreting thin morsels of wax from the 
scales of her under-body—a coarse, dark, yellow¬ 
ish wax, very unlike the delicate white secretion 
of the hive bees. This wax she presently scraped 
off and collected, kneaded it together, chewed it, 


130 They Who Walk in the Wilds y 

and tempered it with her saliva. Then, close be¬ 
side the inner doorway of the nest she began to 
build what looked like a large, round, shallow cell, 
with extremely thin but amazingly tough walls. 
It was not an ordinary cell, however, but a honey 
pot, a temporary thing for holding day-by-day 
supplies; for Bomba knew that her business 
among the blossoms was liable to be interrupted 
at any moment by storm or rain, and she must 
have a store of food indoors, in order not to be 
delayed in her urgent task of home-building. Into 
this honey-pot, as soon as it was deep enough, she 
disgorged what was left of honey in her crop, and 
then bustled forth, impatient to begin her foraging 
for the new nest. 

But for all her impatience, Bomba’s first care, 
on emerging from the darkness of her tunnel, was 
to locate herself. She had had trouble enough 
to find the new home site. She was not going to 
let herself lose it. With her head towards the 
almost invisible entrance she rose on the wing 
and hovered slowly about, in ever-widening cir¬ 
cles, for several minutes. Not until she had 
her directions fixed securely and every landmark 
noted did she swing away on her great business 
of gathering supplies. 

Unlike her far-off cousin, the hive bee, who is 
so specialized, so automatic in all her actions, that 
she seems unable ever to think of more than one 


Queen Bomba of the Honey-Pots 131 

thing at a time, Bomba could think of everything 
at once and seized upon opportunity as it came 
up. She was no purist in method. When the 
hive bee goes out to gather pollen, she quite 
ignores honey, she even ignores every kind of pol¬ 
len except the one which she has started to col¬ 
lect; and when she has her mind set on honey, 
the most alluring display of pollen leaves her ut¬ 
terly uninterested. Bomba, on the other hand, 
was out for all she could get. If one blossom 
offered her honey, she accepted it eagerly, sucking 
it up and storing it in her honey sac. If the next 
flower had been already rifled of its nectar, but 
was rich in pollen, she would seize upon that with 
equal zest, and stuff it into the capacious pollen 
baskets on her thighs. Nor did she care what 
particular brand of pollen it might be. Red, 
orange, yellow, or creamy buff, it was all the same 
to her; so that her thighs were soon decorated 
with vivid, streaky protuberances of the precious 
spoil. As soon as she felt herself freighted, within 
and without, to her full capacity, she flew straight 
back to the nest, circled about the entrance to make 
sure of it, and then hurried in to unload. Her 
honey she disgorged into the honey-pot by the 
door; the pollen she stripped from her thighs and 
deposited on a smooth spot in the centre of the 
nest, treating it, as she did so, with a minute pro¬ 
portion of something of the nature of formic acid 


132 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

from her own glands to keep it sweet. Then she 
hastened forth again for another load, and this 
fragrant toil engrossed her till nearly sunset, for 
she was intent on getting in as big a store as pos¬ 
sible while daylight lasted. 

But the fall of dusk, the coming out of the eve¬ 
ning star—a sudden gleam of silver in the pure 
green-violet sky—meant no relaxation to the im¬ 
patient Bomba. The poet sings to Hesperus as: 

Star that bringest home the bee 

And set’st the weary labourer free, 

but it brought not Bomba home to rest, by any 
means. Of rest and sleep she had had enough 
already; and, to the work on which she was now 
feverishly bent, darkness was no hindrance. In 
the depth of the nest it was always dark; but all 
her senses were so subtly acute that this mattered 
not at all. 

And now, kneading up a stiff paste of pollen 
moistened with honey, she proceeded to build a 
low, circular platform, or pedestal, of the mixture, 
in the centre of the floor. On this savoury foun¬ 
dation she modelled a spacious cell of wax. In the 
bottom of this cell she laid her first eggs, a baker’s 
dozen of them, and then, sealing the top with a 
thin waxen film, she began to brood them, solicit¬ 
ously as a mother thrush. For four days she stuck 
to her task, only leaving it for brief intervals to 


Queen Bomba of the Honey-Pots 133 

snatch a mouthful of honey; and then the eggs 
hatched out into a bunch of hungry grubs, which 
fell straightway to satisfying their hunger by 
devouring the pollen-paste floor on which they 
squirmed. Now Bomba’s duties grew more exact¬ 
ing. She had to rush the work of gathering honey 
and pollen; for the little grubs in the cell grew 
swiftly and their appetites with them. She opened 
the waxen covering of the cell and pumped in con¬ 
tinual rations of the nourishing paste. And be¬ 
tween whiles she continued to brood the little 
family, that the warmth of her great velvety body 
might hasten their development. Soon they grew 
so big that the cell was crowded and they all had 
to stand up on their tails in order*to find room, and 
in this position Bomba had to feed them individu¬ 
ally, thrusting the food into each little greedy 
mouth in turn. In about seven days, however, 
they had reached full growth, and then their 
appetites all ceased simultaneously. Each spun 
itself a tough, perpendicular, silken-paper, yellow- 
brown cocoon, independent, but firmly attached 
to those of its neighbours—shut itself up in 
it, and went to sleep to await the great final 
change. 

The group of cocoons, all stiffly erect and 
knitted together, now needing no longer their 
waxen envelope, Bomba stripped it off and used 
the precious wax to build other and smaller cells 


134 They Who Walk in the Wild t 

encircling the base of the cocoon bundle. In each 
of these, as she completed it, at intervals of two 
and three days, she laid five or six more eggs and 
sealed them up to hatch. She also had to collect 
more and more honey, more and more pollen, and 
to build higher the walls of the great honey-pot 
beside the door as the nectared store increased. 
When not at any of these tasks she spent her 
time, not less arduously, in brooding the cocoons, 
stretching her furry black-and-yellow body to 
warm them all, like a sitting hen who has 
been given a bigger clutch than she can properly 
cover. 

Within the nest these days were just one round 
of uneventful toil; but outside, upon her foraging 
expeditions among the flowers of field and garden, 
Bomba’s life was not without its risks and its ad¬ 
ventures. On account of her great size and 
strength, and the power of her long (though not 
very venomous) sting, she had fewer foes to 
dread than most of her lesser cousins; but, having 
the sole responsibility of the home, for the present, 
on her shoulders, she was bound to be careful, 
though by nature unsuspicious. The biggest and 
fiercest of northern spiders were of no concern to 
her, for none would venture within range of that 
darting flame, her sting, and she could wreck their 
toughest webs without an effort. But some of the 
bigger insect-eating birds were a peril against 


Queen Bomba of the Honey-Pots 135 

which she had to be vigilant. And some of the 
hunting mice and shrews that infested the meadow 
were very dangerous, because they knew how to 
pounce upon her and seize her by the broad back, 
in such a way that her sting could not reach 
them. For the most part, however, the insect- 
hunters were inclined to leave her alone, re¬ 
specting her almost as much as they did that most 
vicious and venomous fighter, the great black 
hornet. 

On one of these mornings, while Bomba’s first 
brood were yet in their cocoons, and Bomba was 
out on one of her hurried foragings, a prowling 
shrew-mouse stumbled upon the entrance of the 
nest. He was hungry, and the smell that came 
from the burrow was appetizing. He knew 
enough about the wild bee, however, to dampen 
any tendency to rashness. He stood motionless, 
and listened intently. Keen as were his ears, he 
could not detect a sound from within. There was 
no rustle of wings—no bustle of busy feet over 
the combs—no warning hum. He judged, rightly 
enough, that the colony was just being started, and 
that its queen and foundress was out gathering 
supplies. He decided to slip in, snatch a few 
mouthfuls of rich and satisfying brood-comb, and 
get away before the owner’s return. 

But he had miscalculated. Just as his tawny 
hind-quarters were disappearing into the burrow, 


136 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

Bomba returned. Swooping downward like a 
flash of flame, she sank her long sting deep into 
the tender flesh between the marauder’s thighs. 
The terrible weapon seared like fire. With a 
squeal of anguish the shrew doubled back convul¬ 
sively, then sprang at his assailant. But Bomba 
was already out of reach, circling over him with a 
deep, angry hum, and obviously ready to strike 
again. 

The shrew was courageous, but his courage 
failed him now. The pain of his wound was in¬ 
tolerable. He darted away in a panic, to hide 
himself under the grass and lick his wound till the 
anguish should be eased. And Bomba, never vin¬ 
dictive, was satisfied with her victory. She crept 
into the burrow in anxious haste to assure herself 
her treasure had not been tampered with. 

On the eleventh day from the commencement 
of their chrysalis sleep the perfect workers began 
to break the tops of their cocoons and crawl forth, 
very frail, damp, and dishevelled. Bomba guided 
them all, by ones and twos, to the great honey-pot, 
where they slaked their hunger, then gathered 
them back to her cocoon couch to be warmed by 
her body and helped with their first, much needed 
toilets. For the next day or so she mothered 
them tenderly in the intervals of her other duties, 
—and the duty of keeping the honey-pot supplied, 
needless to say, was a heavy one. But by the end 


Queen Bomba of the Honey-Pots 137 

of that time the youngsters had reached their full 
strength, and all her care was rewarded. She 
had now a dozen sturdy, sprightly, glossy young 
workers, less than half her size, but keen and 
diligent to share with her the swiftly multiplying 
labours of the nest. The youngsters eagerly 
buzzed forth to collect honey and pollen, and fell 
to mixing bee-bread, feeding the new batch of 
larvae, constructing fresh brood-cells, and replen¬ 
ishing the big communal honey-pot, with the in¬ 
stinctive skill which was their heritage of a mil¬ 
lion generations. They also reinforced the tops 
of their old cocoons with wax, and turned these 
into storage cells that no precious space or labour 
should be wasted. 


in 

The colony being now fairly established, it 
grew with amazing speed. Every two or three 
days a new batch of eggs hatched out into hungry 
larvae, a new detachment of velvety, black-and- 
yellow little workers emerged from their cocoons 
to swell the happy industry of the nest. To them 
all Bomba was both queen and mother. Her rule 
was absolute, unquestioned; but for all her roy¬ 
alty she, unlike the sequestered queen of the hive 
bees, took full share in all the tasks of the commu¬ 
nity, besides performing her own peculiar duty of 


138 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

laying eggs. Now, however, she began to leave 
more of the dangerous outdoor work, the gath¬ 
ering of supplies, to her subjects, and spent more 
of her time in the homework of the nest. But she 
could not forget the lure of the sunshine or the 
riot of bloom which now clothed garden and 
meadow with colour. Once or twice a day she 
would go booming forth to levy toll of her 
favourite flowers. 

One day, when she had her head buried deep in 
the fragrant calyx of a honeysuckle, the Lady of 
the Garden stood close by and watched her at her 
work. Presently the Lady put forth a slender 
finger and, very cautiously apd delicately, stroked 
the black-and-gold velvet of Bomba’s back. The 
touch was light as dandelion down, and conveyed 
no menace to Bomba’s sensitive nerves. She gave 
a shrill little squeak of protest, and went on suck¬ 
ing up the honey with redoubled speed, probably 
thinking that the intruder was after a share of it. 
The Lady laughed, and drew back a step or two, 
still watching and wondering if the great bee was 
going to resent the liberty which had been taken 
with her. Nothing was further from Bomba’s 
thought. She withdrew her head, having drained 
all the honey, and hummed over to the next blos¬ 
som. 

At this moment a hungry shrike,—a bird fitly 
known as u the butcher-bird,”—who had his 


Queen Bomba of the Honey-Pots 139 

nest in a tree beyond the garden wall, swooped 
down and made a dash at the unsuspecting Bomba, 
just as she sank her head into the calyx. It was 
the moment of fate for her,—and consequently, 
for the little community at home in the burrow as 
well. But the Lady, quicker than thought, gave 
a sharp cry and struck at the audacious bird with 
her hand. The shrike, startled, missed his aim, 
merely brushed the blossom roughly with a wing 
tip, and flew up into the nearest tree. The Lady 
indignantly hurled a handful of gravel at him,— 
which, strangely enough, almost hit him,—and 
drove him from the garden. She hated him heart¬ 
ily, ever since she had discovered the thorn bush on 
whose spikes he impaled the butterflies, grasshop¬ 
pers, and little birds who were his victims, when he 
had captured more than he could eat. As for 
Bomba, somewhat flustered by her narrow escape, 
she darted straight away to the safe shelter of the 
nest, without waiting to complete her honeyed 
load. For the nest was indeed a safe shelter now 
—with a hundred ready and fiery stings to guard 
it from all intruders. 

By the time the hay was gathered in and the 
hot noons were growing drowsily shrill with the 
noise of the grasshoppers and cicadas, Bomba’s 
swarm had grown powerful and her little citadel 
in the burrow nearly filled its earthen hiding-place. 
Though built apparently at haphazard, it was 


140 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

now an elaborate structure, tier upon tier of 
coarse, irregular comb all centred about the origi¬ 
nal bunch of cocoons. Throughout it was trav¬ 
ersed by galleries so spacious that even Bomba’s 
bulky form could reach every cell comfortably,— 
the little workers building not only for their own 
puny stature but for hers. As to the character 
and contents of the cells there was rather a lack 
of system, but in general there was a tendency to 
keep the brood cells near the centre, surrounded 
by the pollen cells, for storing thick honey, and a 
few scattered honey-pots for thin, watery day-to- 
day supplies, towards the circumference. The 
great communal honey-pot beside the entrance had 
long ago been abandoned, and its waxen walls 
used up in new construction. 

About this time, when the rich, heavy days 
were shortening and the ripeness of later summer 
had come upon the lazy air, Bomba, at the height 
of her prosperity, began to take thought for the 
future of her race. She, and she alone, had pre¬ 
monition of the bitter season that was to come. 
She began to lay two new kinds of eggs, one kind, 
in ordinary worker cells, to produce males or 
drones instead of workers, the other kind, laid in 
large cells, destined to hatch into big larvae which 
should ultimately be transformed into great and 
splendid queens like herself. 

With this change in her activities Bomba sud- 


Queen Bomba of the Honey-Pots 141 

dcnly found herself strictly confined to the nest 
for a time. She was confronted by an entirely 
new and inexplicable anxiety. As soon as she be¬ 
gan laying the drone and queen eggs some of the 
workers,—who were themselves all imperfectly 
developed females, and not without certain femi¬ 
nine instincts,—were seized with a strange fratri¬ 
cidal jealousy. From time to time they would 
make murderous raids upon these new kinds of 
eggs, seeking to tear them to pieces. Bomba an¬ 
grily beat off all these attacks, but she dared not 
leave the nest even for the briefest turn in the 
sunshine. She had to be ceaselessly on guard, 
night and day. But as soon as the eggs were 
hatched the mothering instincts of the workers 
triumphed over their jealousy, and they began 
tending the new larvae with all care. A few, 
their thwarted sex-instincts partially aroused, even 
began to emulate Bomba and laid some eggs for 
themselves. These eggs, however, never having 
been fertilized by a mating, were incapable of 
producing either workers or queens. All that 
hatched from them, for some inscrutable reason 
known only to Mother Nature herself, were small 
drones. These disappointed little females were 
doing their best in producing mates for others, 
though at no possible profit to themselves. 

All these drones of Bomba’s tribe, though 
scarcely larger than the workers, were fine, inde- 


142 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

pendent, capable fellows, far superior to those 
greedy and lazy spongers the drones of the hive- 
bee. As soon as they were grown up they 
promptly left the nest, to forage for themselves 
and to seek amorous adventure through the last 
bright weeks of the fleeting summer. They were 
quite capable of looking after themselves, and it 
was not for them to loaf about at home and eat 
up the stores which others had collected. 

Bomba’s care was now all for her young queens, 
—who took much longer than the workers or the 
drones to reach maturity. Each as it came forth 
from its big cocoon she tended lovingly, and saw 
it at length fly forth, loaded with honey, never to 
return. By the time the last young queen had 
left the nest Bomba was visibly growing old. 
Worn with her labours, she was weary and be¬ 
draggled, and her velvety garb had a somewhat 
moth-eaten look. She laid a few more worker 
eggs; and then stopped, as there was no need of 
raising fresh young bees just to be killed by the 
autumn frosts. The colony now dwindled apace. 
Many of the workers, having no more young to 
tend at home, forsook the nest and revelled away 
their closing days among the late asters and zin¬ 
nias and dahlias of the garden. Others, more in¬ 
dolent or more toil-worn, fell to eating up the 
stored honey in the cells, to crawl forth finally 
for a last, listless flight, and fall into the grass 


Queen Bomb a of the Honey-Pots 143 

when the worn-out little engine of their being 
came to a stop. 

To Bomba the now almost deserted nest grew 
suddenly hateful. It was all the creation of her 
own tremendous energy and life-force, but she had 
no more use for it. The old fire flickered up again, 
though feebly, in her nerves. Once more, after 
all her toils, she would roam free. She crawled 
out into the glow of the afternoon sun and soared 
briskly over the garden wall,—turning her back 
upon the nest forever. 

Drawn by the blaze of a bed of flame-coloured 
late nasturtiums she quite lost her head for half 
an hour or so, dipping into one gorgeous bloom 
after another, as if to make the most of the fleet¬ 
ing joy. But presently her elation flagged. She 
felt heavy with sleep, and clung to the blossom 
she was on as if she were dazed. Soon she lost 
her hold, and went fluttering to the ground. The 
air had suddenly turned cold. Too drowsy to fly 
she crawled in among the pale-green stalks, and 
nestled down there till she was almost hidden. It 
was an inadequate shelter, but to her it seemed 
sufficient for the moment. She would hunt up a 
better one when she again felt ready to fly. Soon 
she dropped to sleep. The sleep passed into a 
deep coma. The sun went down, and with twilight 
an invisible shroud of damp cold settled upon the 
garden. At its touch the last faint spark of 


144 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

Bomba’s life flickered out, painlessly. But she 
had lived to the full; and she left behind her a 
score of royal and fertile daughters, to carry on, 
when spring should come again, the ancient, fine 
traditions of her race. 


A GENTLEMAN IN FEATHERS 


i 

The tide was out, and the miles on miles of 
naked red mud flats shone like burnished copper 
beneath the flaming sunset. Along high-water 
mark, as far as the eye could see, ran an intermi¬ 
nable line of dyke, fencing from the fury of the 
spring tides the vast pallid expanse of the marshes 
just filming with the light green of early spring. 
At one point the rampart of the dyke, following 
a crook in the low coastline, thrust the blunt apex 
of a spacious angle far out into the sheen of the 
mud-flats. In this corner, partly hidden by a tan¬ 
gle of dry brown mullein stalks, crouched a man 
with a gun, peering out across the flats and scan¬ 
ning the sky towards the southwest. Behind him, 
dotting the well-drained marsh with patches of 
shimmering light, stretched a chain of shallow, 
sedgy meres. In the centre of the nearest one a 
tall blue heron, motionless as if painted on a Jap¬ 
anese screen, stood watching and waiting to spear 
some unwary frog. 

Steve Barron, owner of the little farm on the 
uplands half a mile back, and of the section of 
145 


146 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

marsh between his farm and the dyke, was lying 
in wait for the evening flight of the sea-ducks, 
who were accustomed to feed far out on the tides 
by day and fly in to rest at night on the sedgy 
meres. He was also not without hope of bagging 
a brant or a goose. For this was the season of 
the Northward Flight. That most noble and 
splendid of game-birds, the great Canada goose, 
was now winging up from his winter feeding 
grounds in the rank subtropical lagoons around 
the Gulf of Mexico to his desolate nesting-places 
among the uncharted, swampy lakes of the lone 
north. Last night, lying awake in his bed, Steve 
Barron had listened, with the thrill which that 
mysterious sound never failed to give him, to the 
faint, sonorous, pulsing voices, as flock after flock 
winnowed high overhead through the dark. In his 
imagination, in 

That inward eye 
Which is the bliss of solitude, 

he pictured them, in slender V-shaped array, driv¬ 
ing their sure way straight north on tireless wings, 
high up in the vaulted night. Far off he would 
catch, first, a scarcely audible sound,— honka-honk 
wavering and dying away; then swiftly growing 
louder on the stillness, till passing overhead it be¬ 
came a loud and hollow, indescribably musical, 
throbbing of honka-honka-honka-honka-honka ,— 


A Gentleman in Feathers 


147 


each swift throb a wing-beat,—and in swift dimin¬ 
uendo died away again into the viewless distance, 
leaving a silence strangely poignant until, after a 
waiting that stretched the ear, the approach of 
another flock was heralded. 

Steve Barron’s heart went out to those high- 
journeying voices, and journeyed with them. But 
being a lover of all the wild kindreds and an ar¬ 
dent student of their ways, he knew that not al¬ 
ways did those migrant flocks do their travelling 
by night. Each flock, he knew, was guided and 
ruled by the wise old gander who cleft the air at 
the apex of the V. Sometimes, to break the long, 
long voyage and to rest the weaker members of 
the flock, he would decree a halt of a day and a 
night, or longer if advisable, at some secluded 
water on the way. Steve Barron knew that occa¬ 
sionally a flock had been known to stoop to that 
chain of sedgy pools that lay behind the angles 
of the dyke, out in the naked solitude of the 
marshes. Being woodsman and hunter as well as 
farmer, he had the quaint inconsistency of many 
of the finest hunters, who love the creatures whom 
they love to kill. He was eager to shoot one of 
these beautiful and wary travellers. 

On this particular evening, whilst the sunset 
was flaring red across the coppery gleam of the 
flats, earth, sky and the far-off sea looked all 
equally empty of life. Not even the lightest breeze 


148 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

stirred the brown mullein-tops about Steve Bar¬ 
ron’s hiding-place. 

There being no immediate need of caution, 
Steve Barron stretched his legs, filled his pipe, and 
settled himself for a smoke. But soon, as the 
sun sank below the horizon, and the blaze of rose 
and orange faded down, the spacious solitude be¬ 
gan to come to life. Far up in the paling zenith a 
solitary duck winged inland. A little lower two 
foraging night-hawks swooped, with a long musi¬ 
cal, twanging note as of a smitten harpstring. A 
flock of tiny sandpipers flickered up the mud-flats, 
whirled, with a sudden flash of white breasts, as 
they approached the dyke, and settled into invis¬ 
ibility a couple of hundred yards away. Steve 
Barron reluctantly put away his pipe and drew 
closer into his screen. 

Then five slim “yellow-legs,” who had been 
feeding on the mud along the lip of the receding 
tide, came flying homeward. They flew low, rose 
at the dyke, and passed straight over Barron’s 
head, but never noticed him because he lay so still. 
Had he moved so much as a finger their keen 
bright eyes would have detected him, and they 
would have whirled off in alarm. But they sailed 
down close to the surface of one of the pools, 
dropped their long legs which had been stretched 
out behind them, hung poised for a second on 
arched, motionless wings, and alighted where the 


A Gentleman in Feathers 149 

water was about an inch or so deep. Here they 
ran about, and piped to one another mellowly, 
happy and secure. Steve Barron was well content 
to leave them so. He was after bigger game 
than yellow-legs. And he knew that the sight of 
these wary birds feeding undisturbed would be a 
sign to all other eyes that there was no danger 
near. 

Next there came into view two big ducks,— 
“whistlers,” as Barron’s practical eyes made them 
out to be,—flying high and straight and at tre¬ 
mendous speed. These were worthy game; and 
Steve slipped the gun to his shoulder, stealthily. 
The ducks were heading to pass over a little to 
the left to his hiding-place,—a fair shot, though a 
long one. He was just about to fire when his 
finger stiffened ere it pressed the trigger. His 
keen ears had caught, faint and elusive on the still 
evening air that far-off honka-honka-honka of the 
great geese. A loud, urgent whistling of sturdy 
wings thrilled him for a moment, and the two 
ducks sped by, unsuspecting, and settled, with a 
sharp splash, on one of the farther and deeper 
pools. 

Steve Barron drew a breath of relief because 
he had checked himself in time. A moment later 
the geese came into view,—a thin, black V, one 
leg as long again as the other, heading straight 
for the point of the dyke. They were flying high; 


150 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

but presently they started downwards on a long 
slant and with a throb of exaltation he realized 
that they were planning to alight on one of the 
deep pools half a mile behind him. His chance 
had come, and his nerves steadied. The wild 
pulsing music of that honka-honka-honka-honka- 
honka swept near and grew louder with the swift¬ 
ness of a lightning express. The muzzle of Bar¬ 
ron’s long duck-gun covered the apex of the V and 
followed it up, as he waited for the flock to come 
within range. 

But much as Barron knew of the wild creatures, 
he did not know the expert wariness, the amazing 
keenness of vision, of the experienced gander who 
led that flock and had guided it through many 
perils. That wise bird was not unduly impressed 
by the sight of the bunch of yellow-legs feeding 
placidly in the shallows. He distrusted all sa¬ 
gacity but his own. He had his eye on that patch 
of dead mullein stalks, as something that might 
conceal a foe. And presently he detected the al¬ 
most imperceptible movement of Barron’s gun. 
A sharp note of warning came into his cry, and 
he slanted upwards again abruptly, at the same 
time swerving off to the right with a leap into re¬ 
doubled speed. And the whole V swung with 
him in instant response, each bird stretching its 
long neck to a bar of steel under the sudden fierce 
urge. 


A Gentleman in Feathers 151 

Barron snapped an oath of disappointment and, 
though the range was hopeless, discharged both 
barrels in swiftest succession. He had not al¬ 
lowed for the sudden change of speed in his 
quarry; and so it was more by good luck than good 
shooting that one heavy pellet found its mark. It 
caught the hindermost bird of the flock, a young, 
unmated gander, in the wing. He shot far for¬ 
wards with tremendous impetus of his flight, 
turned over and over, and pitched, with a mighty 
splash, into the centre of the nearest pool. The 
yellow-legs scattered off with shrill pipings of 
alarm; and the two ducks on the pool half a mile 
away, flapped up, squawking indignantly, and flew 
off to safer waters. 

With a whoop of triumph Steve Barron 
dropped his gun and dashed into the pool to se¬ 
cure his prize. This pool was nowhere more than 
a foot deep,—in most parts not more than two or 
three inches. The wounded bird could not escape 
by diving. Only here and there could he swim; 
and at running he was no adept in any case. Over¬ 
taken in half a minute he turned valiantly at bay. 
With harsh, vicious hissing, and savage dartings 
of his long snaky neck, he jabbed at his adver¬ 
sary’s legs,—and his iron-hard bill brought blood, 
even through the thick homespun trousers, at 
every twisting snap. At the same time he pounded 
heavily with his one uninjured wing. But Barron 


152 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

was too elated to care for his bitten legs. This 
was better luck than he had ever dared to hope 
for,—a prize indeed to adorn his barn-yard. The 
more fiercely the splendid bird fought, the better 
Barron loved him. He grabbed the buffeting 
wing and held it helpless. He caught the darting 
neck in a firm but tender grip, just behind the head. 
He lugged the unsubdued, still struggling captive 
ashore, held him down between his knees; and, 
after much difficulty, with both hands bleeding 
from savage bites, managed to get him securely 
bundled up in his coat, knotting the bundle with 
the coat sleeves and with the stout string which a 
woodsman always carries in his pocket. Then, 
having picked up his gun, he tucked the precious 
bundle under his arm, tail foremost, and set off 
exultant on the long tramp back to his farm. He 
had a good reason for carrying his prize tail fore¬ 
most. He had, of course, been unable to truss up 
his captive’s head; and the outraged bird, un¬ 
daunted by the ignominious position in which it 
found itself, was biting vindictively wherever it 
could reach. But the seat of Steve Barron’s trou¬ 
sers was of double thickness, for the sake of dur¬ 
ability, and proof against the utmost that furious 
darting, twisting bill could do. At each indignant 
assault Barron chuckled appreciatively, thinking 
how his indomitable captive would lord it over the 
barn-yard. 


A Gentleman in Feathers 


153 

II 

At first, until his wing was healed, the great 
gander was kept solitary in a lighted shed, where 
he could see none of the other denizens of the 
farm-yard. He was a magnificent specimen of his 
noble breed, the aristocrats of their race. Taller 
and of far more graceful lines than other geese, 
he had a glossy black neck that was swanlike in its 
length and slenderness. The jet black of his head 
and bill was set off vividly by a crescent-shaped 
half collar of pure white under the throat, extend¬ 
ing from eye to eye. His back and wings were of 
a warm greyish brown, each feather edged with a 
lighter shade. His breast was grey, fading softly 
into white on the belly and thighs; while his tail 
and his strong webbed feet, again, were inky 
black. 

The stately captive soon grew tame enough un¬ 
der his master’s feeding and gentle handling, but 
kept always a severe and dignified aloofness, as 
far removed from fear as from familiarity. He 
learned to recognize his name of “Michael,” and 
would condescend to feed from his master’s hand; 
but any attempt to caress him was always rebuffed 
with a warning hiss, and a flash of his dark, bril¬ 
liant eyes. At length Steve Barron clipped the 
long flight-feathers of the wounded wing, turned 
him out into the barn-yard, and watched with boy- 


154 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

ish curiosity to see how he would conduct him¬ 
self. 

The moment he realized he was free, Michael 
spread his wings, took a long run, and flapped 
mightily, striving to rise into the air, while the 
ducks quacked and the hens squawked and cackled 
at the strange intruder upon their peace. But in¬ 
stead of flying, as he expected to do, Michael 
merely sprang into the air about three feet, and 
fell over heavily upon his side. It was a blow 
to both his hopes and his dignity. Swift to learn 
his lesson he made no second attempt, but stood 
for a moment staring about him, and then moved 
slowly towards the puddle of water beside the 
horse-trough, where the ducks were congregated. 
The ducks, gabbling excitedly, made way for him 
with great respect; but the farm-yard cock, a big, 
pugnacious cross-bred wyandotte, resenting his 
lofty air, dashed at him furiously. This attack 
was met with a hiss so loud and strident, so full 
of menace, that the cock was startled out of his 
arrogance. He checked his rush abruptly, eyed 
his intended victim with keen appraisal, and 
stalked off to tell his flock that the stranger was 
not worth bothering about. He flew up on the 
woodpile, crowed a shrill challenge, and then, see¬ 
ing that the challenge went unanswered, flew down 
again and fell to scratching in the litter. Thence¬ 
forth he ignored the stranger as completely as 


A Gentleman in Feathers 155 

the stranger ignored him, and felt quite assured 
that his honour was satisfied. This little by-play 
amused Barron, to whom all the creatures on the 
farm were individuals, and individually interesting. 

After guttering in the puddle for a few seconds 
with his strong black bill Michael stretched him¬ 
self to his full height, scanned the sky overhead, 
and gave a long, resonant call of honka-honka- 
honka-honka-honka-honka-honk. Then he listened 
intently, as if expecting an answer out of the blue. 

In a second or two an answer came; but not 
such a one as he expected, and neither did it come 
from the sky. From behind the cow-shed at the 
further end of the farm-yard, waddling hurriedly, 
appeared a big white gander, followed by three 
geese, two of whom were pied grey-and-white, 
while the third was clear grey, and somewhat slen¬ 
derer in build than her companions. In that long 
call of Michael’s, for all its strangeness and its 
wildness, the white gander had recognized some¬ 
thing of kinship, and at the same time something 
of challenge to his supremacy. When he saw the 
tall, dark form of the stranger, erect and watch¬ 
ful beside the watering-trough, he gave vent to a 
harsh scream of defiance and rushed forwards, 
with uplifted wings and with open bill, to chase 
the intruder from his premises. 

Recognizing the white gander as, in a way, one 
of his own kind, Michael eyed him, for a second 


156 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

or two, with an interest that was inclined to be 
friendly. Then, seeing that the gander was any¬ 
thing but friendly, anger surged up in his lonely 
heart. Lowering his long, black, snake-like neck, 
stretching it out parallel with the ground, and 
waving it from side to side with a peculiarly men¬ 
acing movement, he hissed like a whole nestful of 
copperheads and advanced to meet the unpro¬ 
voked attack. 

The two great birds came together with a thud, 
amid a storm of wild hissings and a desperate 
buffeting of wings. The white gander had some¬ 
what the advantage in more weight, but he had 
none of Michael’s lightning swiftness, and his 
strength was no match for the corded and sea¬ 
soned muscles opposed to him. In a duel with 
one of his own tribe Michael would have fought 
warily, sparring for an advantage before coming 
to grips. But in this encounter he had been 
rushed, and the fight was at close quarters on the 
instant. Before he had time to realize his mistake 
the white gander was hopelessly beaten. Seizing 
him by the upper wing-joint Michael shook him off 
his balance, bore him over on his back, trod him 
down and smothered him with wing-strokes, and 
then grabbed him, like a bulldog, by the throat, to 
settle the matter once for all. 

But at this moment just in time to save the white 
gander’s life, Steve Barron sprang to the rescue. 


A Gentleman in Feathers 157 

He dragged the furious Michael off,—getting well 
bitten in the process,—and hurled him aside. Then 
he snatched up the bedraggled and choking gan¬ 
der, and deposited him in the shed from which his 
conqueror had so lately been released. Michael 
shook himself vigorously, gave utterance to a sin¬ 
gle ringing honka-honk of triumph, and proceeded 
calmly to preen his feathers, which had been ruf¬ 
fled less by the fight than by Steve Barron’s rude 
interference. 

What specially concerned Barron now was the 
attitude which the victorious Michael would take 
towards the three geese. He had heard, or read, 
somewhere, that the wild goose, unlike his domes¬ 
ticated cousin, was rigidly monogamous. He hoped 
it was not so, for he wanted to establish Michael 
in the dethroned white gander’s place, as lord of 
the harem, and rear a new breed of geese that 
should eclipse anything in all the country-side. But 
he must wait and learn Michael’s intentions be¬ 
fore sending the white gander into exile. 

Presently the two pied geese, regarding the dark 
and stately conqueror with high approval, came 
waddling up to make his acquaintance and tell him 
how wonderful he was. This they did by ducking 
their heads with a queer little jerky movement, 
unmistakably conciliatory. The grey goose fol¬ 
lowed them with head erect, curious but indiffer¬ 
ent. She had been the favourite of the white 


158 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

gander, and though she certainly admired his van¬ 
quisher she had a high opinion of her own value. 

As the geese approached, Michael drew him¬ 
self to his full height and regarded them intently. 
They did not please him at all. They were too 
much like his late antagonist. But they were fe¬ 
males, so his breeding forbade him to attack 
them. He turned, and stalked away haughtily. 
The two pied geese followed, still ducking their 
heads and gabbling softly in their throats. The 
grey, on the other hand, stopped abruptly, and 
cocked her head to examine the sky, as if inter¬ 
ested in nothing but the weather prospects. Then 
she strolled across to the other side of the farm¬ 
yard and fell to feeding on a patch of tender 
young grass. 

Half around the yard moved, slowly and sol¬ 
emnly, the procession of Michael and the two pied 
geese,—Michael with lofty head in air, pointedly 
unconscious of the pursuit, his enamoured follow¬ 
ers waddling and bobbing hopefully a couple of 
yards behind his arrogant tail. They passed close 
by Steve Barron, who stifled his laughter lest he 
should disturb the drama. They passed the grey 
goose, who went on feeding with apparent uncon¬ 
cern,—and who, perhaps on that very account, 
attracted a piercing glance of interest from Mi¬ 
chael’s haughty eye. Then the two wooers, gain¬ 
ing confidence, closed up. His patience and his 


A Gentleman in Feathers 159 

politeness alike exhausted, Michael turned sharply 
and ran at them with a hiss of indignant protest. 
His unwelcome pursuers, suddenly alarmed, scur¬ 
ried away; and Michael found himself beside the 
grey goose, who ignored him and went on feed¬ 
ing. But Barron noticed that she merely went 
through the form of feeding, biting at the grass 
and letting it drop from her bill. 

Now the wanderer from the south was un¬ 
mated, and very lonely. The grey goose, though 
so unlike the females of his own race, was grace¬ 
ful and attractive. He desired her. Ducking his 
proud head he stepped close to her side, murmur¬ 
ing musically in his throat, and pretended to pick 
a morsel of the grass just where she was biting at 
it. The grey goose was flattered. She had noted 
with complaisance the rebuff of her two sisters. 
Her heart went out to the stately stranger. Her 
aloofness melted, and she lightly brushed his 
arched black neck with her bill. For a few mo¬ 
ments the two gabbled together in intimate under¬ 
tones, and then, having come to an understanding, 
went off side by side towards the goose-pond, in 
the meadow behind the barn, the grey goose ob¬ 
viously guiding her new lover. 

The two pied geese, seeing that their sister had 
broken down the splendid stranger’s reserve, took 
heart again and waddled excitedly in pursuit, 
never doubting that they would be allowed to 


160 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

share his favour. But they were speedily disillu¬ 
sioned. Michael turned upon them with a warn¬ 
ing hiss which they could not misunderstand. They 
wandered back disconsolately towards the horse- 
trough and lifted their voices in an appeal for 
their vanquished lord. The white gander an¬ 
swered from his prison. Then Steve Barron let 
them in to share his safe captivity for the night, 
that the situation might have time to settle down 
in its new adjustment. When he let them out, the 
following morning, the white gander, his spirits 
quite revived, led off at once to the familiar goose- 
pond. But when he caught sight of Michael and 
the grey goose, contentedly preening their feath¬ 
ers at the edge of the pond, he accepted the new 
order with resignation. He conducted his dimin¬ 
ished harem to another pond, a couple of hundred 
yards away. And Steve Barron concluded,—as 
the event proved rightly,—that there would be no 
more fighting. 


in 

Thenceforth the two establishments kept 
widely apart. Michael was not aggressive, so 
long as he was allowed to mind his own business; 
and as for the white gander, he had learned his 
lesson well. He would run no risk of a second 
humiliation. But the grey goose found herself 
obliged to learn a number of things. Michael 


A Gentleman in Feathers 161 

was a most devoted and tender lover, but a jeal¬ 
ous one; and he insisted on her living up to his 
ideals. There was no more loafing about the barn¬ 
yard for her. Michael chose a little rushy point, 
jutting out into the goose-pond, for their abode; 
and observing this, Steve Barron gave them a feed- 
trough close to the water’s edge. As a protection 
against skunks, foxes and other night marauders, 
the geese were always shut up in a pen in the yard 
at night; but Barron surmised that any prowler 
who interfered with Michael’s establishment 
would get a rude surprise. 

The domestic geese had a slack habit of drop¬ 
ping their first eggs of the season wherever they 
happened to be at the critical moment,—whether in 
the middle of the barn-yard, out in the meadow, 
or even in the mud of the pond. As their laying 
time was early morning, Barron saved the eggs 
by not letting the careless mothers out till after 
breakfast. But the grey goose was not allowed 
any such slackness. As soon as Michael perceived 
that she would presently begin to lay, he persuaded 
her to arrange a rude nest, of dead rushes and 
dry grass, in the centre of the reedy point. He 
helped her to construct it; and he insisted on her 
laying her first egg in it. After that he had no 
more trouble with her, for she became as inter¬ 
ested in her domestic duties as he was himself. 
Instincts of her remote wild ancestry awakened 
within her, and she grew almost as fierce as 


162 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

Michael himself when Steve Barron came, as he 
did daily, to see how the home on the rushy point 
was getting on. At first he never got away from 
his inspection without bitten legs and buffeted 
knees. But at length Michael, with his high intelli¬ 
gence, came to recognize that the tall being whom 
he could neither hurt nor terrify was altogether 
friendly, however unwelcome, and ceased to greet 
him with anything worse than a monitory hiss. 

When there were six big white eggs in the 
nest (a mate of Michael’s own kind would have 
laid only four, or possibly five, and these would 
have been of a creamy buff in colour), the happy 
grey goose began to sit. Now Michael grew more 
savage in his guardianship; and Steve Barron, well 
content, refrained from tormenting the pair with 
his attentions, only visiting the pond each morn¬ 
ing to put fresh feed in the trough. On one of 
these morning visits he found near the edge of 
the pond the drowned body of a big weasel. The 
weasel had made the mistake of thinking the 
guardian of the nest an ordinary gander. Michael 
had caught him by the back of the neck, with the 
tenacity of a bulldog, and held him under water 
till his many murderous crimes were expiated. 
Barron sometimes wondered how a fox would 
fare in a fight with his redoubtable favourite. But, 
perhaps fortunately for Michael, the foxes of that 
neighbourhood were too wary to venture so near 
the farm-yard. They had no mind to invite the 


A Gentleman in Feathers 163 

vengeance of that omnipotent being, the Man 
with a Gun. 

After about a month of devoted brooding the 
grey goose led down into the water six particularly 
sturdy and lively goslings. They were darker in 
colour than ordinary goslings, and had black bills 
and feet like their splendid sire. But as they grew 
up, and their baby down gave place to grown-up 
feathers, they were more like their mother than 
their father, except that their tail, heads and faces 
were greyish black. They all lacked the broad 
conspicuous crescent of pure white across the 
throat which added so much to the distinction of 
Michael’s appearance. Their backs and wings 
were of a solid dark grey, with none of the rich 
chocolate colouring of their father. Moreover 
they all proved to be most sociable and domes¬ 
ticated in their tastes, with a distinct inclination 
to fraternize with the youngsters of the white gan¬ 
der’s rival flock. So it came about that before 
the end of the summer, when they were nearly 
full-grown, Michael and the grey goose, quite sat¬ 
isfied with each other’s society, chased them away 
altogether and once more had the goose-pond to 
themselves. Absorbed in each other, they were 
not at all troubled that the white gander now led 
their own offspring in his train. All they de¬ 
manded was that the garrulous flock should give 
a wide berth to the goose-pond. 

At last came autumn, and the time of the 


164 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

Southward Flight. With the autumn moult, of 
course, Michael renewed the flight feathers of his 
clipped wing. Steve Barron purposely refrained 
from clipping them again, because, being a natu¬ 
ralist at heart, he wanted to find out what Michael 
would do. Which would triumph in that wild 
heart, the call of his kind and the migratory urge, 
or his devotion to his mate? 

When the days grew short and grey, and bleak 
winds swept the little upland farm, and ice, in 
the crisp mornings, fringed the muddy edges of 
the goose-pond, and far away across the faded 
marshes the stormy tides of autumn roared and 
pounded at the dyke-barrier, then in Michael’s 
heart stirred memories of the warm blue lagoons 
and sun-steeped reed-beds of the south. When 
the first southward-bound flock of his kindred 
passed high overhead, and their hollow honking 
throbbed downward to his ears, Michael stretched 
himself erect, with waving wings, and answered 
the alluring voices with a long cry of honka-honka- 
honka-honka, repeating it at brief intervals till the 
journeying V was out of sight and hearing. The 
grey goose, not understanding at all, but vaguely 
apprehensive, cocked her eyes skyward, and then 
added her own shrill clamour to her mate’s sono¬ 
rous appeal. 

When all was quiet again Michael gabbled to 
her anxiously, striving to fire her blood with his 


A Gentleman in Feathers 16 $ 

own restlessness. But in vain. The grey goose 
would do anything in her power to please him, 
but she could not help being content with her well¬ 
loved home. In her heart she felt no urge to 
wandering, in her unpractised wings no power of 
prolonged flight. But she did her best to be sym¬ 
pathetic, flapping her wings and clamouring to 
the skies whenever Michael indulged in that in¬ 
comprehensible exercise. And from this Michael, 
not unnaturally, concluded that she, too, was long¬ 
ing for the south and ready to go with him. He 
could not conceive of any obstacle to the fulfill¬ 
ment of his dreams. They would spend a care¬ 
free winter on the palm-fringed lagoons and wild- 
rice beds and then, of course,—since all the geese, 
wild and tame alike, are home-lovers,—return with 
spring to their old nest beside the goose-pond. 

It was not, however, until after several days of 
this restlessness and longing that the flight-fever 
in Michael’s veins reached the point when it could 
no longer be resisted. It was a bright, sharp 
morning, with that edge to the air which spurs 
the spirit to adventure. Over the wooded ridge 
behind the farm appeared a long V of migrants, 
flying rather low and filling the sky with their 
poignant music. Michael sent forth one joyous 
honka-honka, to tell them he was coming, took a 
sharp run with wings flapping violently, sprang 
into the air, and went beating upwards on a long 


166 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

slant calculated to join the flock at a point per¬ 
haps half a mile or more away, far out over the 
marshes. He never doubted that his faithful 
mate would follow him. 

This, indeed, after a moment of agonized hesi¬ 
tation, she did, but only by a desperate effort. 
Michael, glancing back to assure himself, saw her 
flapping valiantly about thirty yards behind him, 
and sped onward and upward, his heart throbbing 
with exultation. 

The grey goose had never flown more than 
two or three hundred yards, at the utmost. She 
had never been more than twenty feet above her 
familiar green earth. Now, after a few seconds’ 
frantic pursuit of her lord, she found herself wing¬ 
ing high above the tops of the tallest fir-trees. 
She was terrified. But she forgot that terror in 
a greater one, when she saw that Michael was 
leaving her far behind. Giving up the vain at¬ 
tempt to mount to his height, she flapped on des¬ 
perately below him, in a level flight, driving her 
poor wings, more by will and nerve than muscu¬ 
lar strength, to an effort which they were never 
intended for. She tried to call, hoping that Mi¬ 
chael would relent and come back to her. But no 
sound came from her gaping bill and gasping 
throat. She was by this time well out over the 
marshes. At last, her overtaxed muscles would 
no longer obey her will. Still flapping, but ever 


A Gentleman in Feathers 167 

more and more feebly, she sank lower and lower, 
and came down with a loud splash in the shallows 
of a marshy pool. For perhaps half a dozen 
seconds she sat there dazed. Then, finding her 
voice again, she screamed beneath the loved form 
that flew so far and high above her. 

Michael was by this time very near the flock. 
But through the whistling of his wings that scream 
reached his ear. He looked back. His strong 
flight slackened as he saw that his mate was not 
following him. He looked down, far down,—and 
descried her staggering and flapping painfully 
over the harsh stubble of the marsh. Just for 
two or three wing-beats he hesitated, staring wist¬ 
fully after the flock. Then, with their joyous mu¬ 
sic ringing through every fibre, he turned aside, 
and sank down in wide spirals from his free 
heights and coloured dreams to rejoin his earth- 
bound mate. As he observed her pitiful exhaus¬ 
tion the realization came to him that the power 
of flight was not hers, but that she had done her 
desperate best to follow him. Rather than for¬ 
sake her he would forget the blue lagoons and the 
golden-green reed-beds. 

Very slowly and painfully, but with happiness 
in her heart, the grey goose led him back, across 
the rough marsh and up the rocky hill, to the dear, 
familiar pond behind Steve Barron’s barn. 


THE CAVE OF THE BEAR 


i 

Below a sharp ledge of grey and black rock, 
swept naked by the winds, the drifted snow fell 
away in a steep slope, and then rounded off into 
the aching whiteness of the levels. The pale sun 
glared icily from the whitish sky, calling forth 
here and there a thin and steel-sharp glint of bit¬ 
ter radiance upon the dead-white immensity of 
the snow. The wind, which for weeks had 
scourged the frozen world, had fallen to the 
stillness of death; and now, in the grip of the 
immeasurable cold, the gaunt, solitary fir-trees, 
towering darkly at wide intervals above the waste, 
cracked like rifle-shots under the fierce tension of 
their fibres. 

But in the cave beneath the ledge it was not 
cold. Through the curtain of drifted snow, seven 
or eight feet in thickness, which covered the nar¬ 
row entrance, the bitterness of the frost could not 
penetrate. The snow-curtain was supported by 
the feathery branches of a young fir sapling, 
which kept the snow firmly in place yet so light 
and full of air-spaces that its soft shield was a 
168 


The Cave of the Bear 169 

more potent barrier than turf or stone against the 
savagery of the outer cold. 

In the faintly glimmering darkness of the cave 
there was a musky, vital odour, with vague wafts 
of warmish air as if some great animal were 
breathing very slowly in its sleep. Now and again 
there would be a little drowsy whimper, as of deep 
content, or an almost imperceptible sound of 
furry snuggling and suckling unutterably comfort¬ 
able; and in response there would come a faint 
stir, with two or three loud breaths from mighty 
lungs half minded to wake up. The air of the 
cave would be warmer for a moment, and the vital 
smell more pungent. Then all would sink again 
into sleep and silence—but a sleep and silence 
how unlike that stillness of death that reigned 
in the Great Frost outside the cave! 

11 

If Bob McLaggan had not had a will of tem¬ 
pered steel, if his heart had not been as stout as 
his muscles were enduring, he would, hours back, 
have given up the hopeless struggle and sunk 
down into the snow to his final sleep. And in the 
following summer, perhaps, some migrant Indian 
or trapper would have come upon his bones, 
picked clean by minks and foxes. Not born to 
the backwoods, and presuming too far upon his 


170 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

strength and his acquired woodcraft, he had need¬ 
lessly challenged the Wilderness in its most 
implacable mood, and the challenge had been vin¬ 
dictively accepted. Just at that time when the 
northern winter is often at its deadliest, before 
yielding to the approach of spring, he had set out 
from Gilson’s Camp, on his snow-shoes, to cut 
across the Height of Land to Burnt Brook Settle¬ 
ment. This, at best, was a ten hours’ tramp; but 
he was an expert on the snow-shoes, and well sea¬ 
soned to cold and fatigue. Moreover, having 
hunted all through that region the previous au¬ 
tumn, he flattered himself that he knew the way 
as well as any native. 

McLaggan journeyed light. He carried with 
him his sporting rifle, a .303, which suited him for 
any game from a partridge to a bull-moose. At 
his belt was slung a little tin kettle, that he might 
melt snow and refresh himself with hot tea on his 
journey. And in the haversack on his back, along 
with a change of raiment, went a loaf of camp 
bread and a generous “chunk” of cold boiled pork. 
The rest of his belongings at the camp he left be¬ 
hind him, to be carried by the first team which 
should be sent in to the settlement. 

McLaggan set out in high spirits eager for a 
taste of civilization after months of the Wilder¬ 
ness winter. He thought of the homely houses of 
the little, straggling backwoods settlement, of the 


The Cave of the Bear 171 

leisurely train which would come hooting and 
pounding along, the following day, to pick him up 
at the bleak station and carry him back to the city. 
As he swung, with the long, loose shambling strides 
of the skilled snow-shoer, oyer the well-packed 
surface of the snow, his head was filled with 
visions of theatre and dance and smiling, white¬ 
armed girls. At this so long perspective, all 
women looked wonderful to him. In spite of the 
intense cold—unheeded degrees below zero—he 
was all aglow with vigour and anticipation, and 
the swift red blood raced in his veins under the 
stimulus of the keen and biting air. 

He had started from the camp before dawn. 
The sunrise, pale and iridescent like mother-of- 
pearl, had found him at the foot of the long, 
gradual slope which led up to the Height of Land. 
All morning he had breasted the rise with gay 
resolution. Toward noon, assured that more 
than half of his journey lay well behind him, he 
halted in a little open space surrounded by dense, 
snow-sheathed fir-trees, and built himself a fire in 
the snow. Being a good woodsman, he built 
a small, handy, intimate fire that was conven¬ 
ient for the boiling of his tea-kettle and comfort¬ 
able to sit by while he smoked and rested after 
his lunch. He allowed himself a full hour for this 
noon halt, and enjoyed every minute of it, out¬ 
stretched luxuriously upon an armful of scattered 


172 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

spruce-branches. Then he buried the fire in snow, 
slipped his moccasined feet into the moose-hide 
thongs of his snow-shoes, and blithely resumed 
his march. 

By this time he had come out upon the high and 
comparatively level, though broken, plateau which 
crowned the Height of Land. There was now no 
more ascent to climb, and the snow had been 
packed harder by the winds, so he travelled more 
swiftly. But two or three times in the course of 
the afternoon he felt a momentary hesitation as 
to his path. Such scanty landmarks as had been 
familiar to him in the autumn were now hardly 
recognizable under their deep muffiings of snow. 
The sky had thickened till the sun was no more 
visible as a guide, and the soft, pearly, diffused 
light made all things look alike to him. But he 
felt so sure of his general direction, so confident 
in his woods-instinct, that it never occurred to him 
to verify his course. 

And then, when the pearly light was just be¬ 
ginning to take on a greyer, more forbidding 
tinge, when he was just beginning to expect the 
levels to fall away before him and open up a view 
of the wide Valley of Burnt Brook, he got a 
shock which brought him up in the middle of his 
eager stride. He ran upon a solitary snow-shoe 
track! 

It was his own! He knew, beyond a question, 


173 


The Cave of the Bear 

the pattern of it. His snow-shoes were of a shape 
used only by an Indian tribe of the far North¬ 
west. 

McLaggan was startled and humiliated. His 
woodcraft had failed him grossly. He took out his 
pipe, filled and lit it defiantly, and then studied 
his surroundings. Yes, he remembered those 
three tall spruces on the right, too gaunt to carry 
any cloak of snow. He had passed them about the 
middle of the afternoon. He was good and lost. 
“A pretty damn fool!” he laughed bitterly. Of 
course, he could retrace his tracks back to the 
camp—-the only sensible thing to do! But then, 
the shame of it! The mockery that would greet 
him! And the night would be dark, for there was 
no moon, and the sky was overcast. There would 
be only the misleading, ghostly glimmer of the 
snow to find his way by. Further, in his confi¬ 
dence he had indulged his cheery appetite and con¬ 
sumed every scrap of his supplies for lunch. 
And in that devouring cold he was already fiercely 
hungry. There was nothing for it but to make 
camp for the night, keep up a good fire, and con¬ 
sole himself with his pipe. With the first of the 
morning light he would strike onward again for 
the settlement; and this time he would be more 
careful of his direction. 

Having no cutting implement with him but his 
heavy hunting knife, McLaggan’s first care was 


174 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

a supply of firewood, chiefly dead branches, be¬ 
fore the daylight should fail him; and with the 
knife he hacked down a few birch saplings, to 
mix with the dry wood and make his fire last 
longer. Then, using one of his snow-shoes as 
a shovel, he dug in the snow a trench about four 
feet deep, three feet wide, and seven or eight feet 
long. In one end of this trench he deposited an 
armful of green spruce branches to rest upon. At 
the other end he started his frugal fire. 

In spite of the cold, which by now, with night¬ 
fall, had sunk down upon the voiceless world with 
redoubled intensity, there in the narrow depths 
of his trench McLaggan was almost warm. But 
hungry and exhausted as he was, he did not dare 
to lie down and sleep, lest in his sleep the fire 
should go out, the awful cold creep in upon him 
unawares, and his sleep change into death. 
Hunched over the fire he smoked and endlessly 
smoked, and in his mind retraced the steps of his 
journey, trying to decide at what point he had 
gone astray. At times he would turn his attention 
to cutting up the green birch sticks into handy 
lengths for his fire. Or he would vary the pro¬ 
gramme and cheat his craving appetite by melting 
some snow in his little kettle and making himself 
a weak but faintly aromatic tea of the birch twigs. 
And once in a while, when the deathly stillness 
seemed to close in too overwhelmingly upon his 


i75 


The Cave of the Bear 

lonely refuge, he suddenly set up a rollicking song. 
But this would presently come to seem as if it 
were stirring some slow, vast, implacable resent¬ 
ment in the heart of the terrible solitude; and he 
would stop abruptly, feeling as if he ought to apol¬ 
ogize, and stir his little fire to a livelier blaze. 
The fire—it was his one friend; and they two 
were alone together in an infinite loneliness. 

And so the long night wore itself away. 

With the first of dawn McLaggan sprang up, 
shook himself, and tightened his belt. He drank 
some more of his insipid—but at least hot—birch 
tea. Then piling the last of the wood on the fire, 
he proceeded to warm himself systematically 
through and through. But he had to acknowledge 
to himself, ruefully, that though food could give 
warmth, warmth was a poor substitute for break¬ 
fast. A few minutes later he was under way, and 
heading, not back toward camp, but, in his obsti¬ 
nacy, for the settlement. 

During the night, in thinking over the lay of 
the land, he had decided just where he had gone 
wrong. For about an hour he followed his trail 
of the preceding afternoon. By this time he had 
reached a space of broken ground, covered with 
rounded humps, which his old trail skirted on the 
left. He had taken these humps for thick clumps 
of bush buried in snow. He now realized that 
they were a colony of scattered boulders. He re- 


176 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

membered them from the autumn, and knew at 
once where he was. Burnt Brook Valley was not 
more than a dozen miles ahead. His heart 
jumped with relief and exultation. He skirted 
the broken ground on the right, instead of the 
left, and broke into the long, loose, shambling 
trot of the Indian snow-shoe runner. He would 
be at the settlement before noon—and he thought 
no more of girls and dances, but of buckwheat 
cakes and bacon. 

In this mood he hurried forward for perhaps a 
half hour; and then, without warning, the jealous 
Powers of the Wilderness, coldly mocking his 
over-confidence, touched him, and tripped him 
up. What looked like a firm level of the snow 
was but the mask of a pit between two rocks, a 
pit half filled with juniper bushes and debris and 
old logs. The spreading tops of the juniper held 
up the snow, like a roof. The moment McLaggan 
planted a foot upon it, it gave way, and through 
he went—head and shoulders and one foot first, 
while the other foot, in its snow-shoe, kicked 
ignominiously on top of the hole. 

Scratched, torn, and wrenched though he was 
by the headlong plunge, McLaggan’s predominant 
feeling was that of being choked and smothered. 
Blindly fumbling, he released his foot from the 
thongs of the snow-shoe. Then he crawled forth, 
drew a deep breath, brushed the snow and broken 


177 


The Cave of the Bear 

twigs from his eyes and mouth, and stretched his 
arms and legs to assure himself that there were 
no bones broken. In his relief at finding himself 
uninjured—for a few bruises and scratches were 
nothing—he laughed aloud. But as his eyes fell 
upon his snow-shoes, half buried in the snow, the 
laughter died on his lips. The wooden framework 
of one shoe was smashed hopelessly. 

The realization of what that meant to him went 
through his heart with a stab. Without snow- 
shoes to carry him over the soft surface, the seven 
or eight miles of five-foot-deep snow which sep¬ 
arated him from safety would be for him, without 
food and in that overwhelming cold, a barrier not 
to be passed unless by a miracle. That cold was 
eating up his reserves of vital warmth and strength 
with the greed of a wolf-pack. Already he felt it 
creeping into his bones. A wave of exhaustion 
swept over him. He shook it off savagely, and 
picked up the broken snow-shoe. His whole 
weight had come down upon it in the fall, jam¬ 
ming it through some interstice between the logs 
at the bottom of the hole, and buckling the frame¬ 
work both length-wise and across. The wreck was 
complete, and under the circumstances final. In 
the warmth of the camp, with plenty of stout cord 
and strips of strong wood, he could have mended 
it in a few hours. But here, and in this tempera¬ 
ture! What was the use of thinking about it? 


178 They JVho Walk in the Wilds 

Already he felt the cold benumbing his wits, so 
he took his bearings and set out once more. He 
would, at least, keep going to the last gasp. His 
knapsack he threw away, a now useless burden in 
the struggle for life. But the snow-shoes he clung 
to, with a fleeting notion that he might yet do 
something with them. A mere feather-weight, he 
slung them on his back in place of the discarded 
knapsack. But his rifle, carefully cleared of snow, 
he carried ready for use. It might provide the 
miracle that was needed to pull him through. For 
it was food, and food alone, that could save him. 

The snow, except in scant patches where it had 
drifted thin, lay everywhere from four to five feet 
deep. At every step McLaggan sank, sometimes 
only to the knee, more often to the thigh, to the 
waist. He did not walk, he floundered. At first 
he could keep straight on for several hundred 
yards before he would have to pause for breath. 
The exertion, calling into play every muscle of his 
body, soon warmed him, but he knew this inner 
warmth, with nothing to feed it, was only the 
more quickly exhausting him. He prudently mod¬ 
erated his exertions. He half closed his eves; he 
banished all thoughts; he concentrated his will 
upon economizing every ounce of energy in muscle, 
nerve, or brain—in brain above all, for there, he 
knew, lav the springs of his will and his vitality. 
Nevertheless, within less than an hour he found 


179 


The Cave of the Bear 

that his enforced halts for rest were growing more 
and more frequent. A deadly exhaustion was be¬ 
ginning to clutch at him. If only he could get a 
mouthful of food he could keep it at bay. At 
every halt he opened his eyes wide and peered 
eagerly about him, in the hope of glimpsing some 
winter prowler whom he could shoot. But the 
wilderness was lifeless. Not even a rabbit-track 
could he see anywhere upon the stainless levels of 
the snow. And if there were no rabbits abroad, 
there was small likelihood of any others of the 
wild kindred, all hunters of rabbits, crossing his 
desperate path. 

For another hour McLaggan laboured on, his 
progress growing ever slower and slower. Then 
he began to lose count and care of time. He would 
allow himself to think only of keeping his direc¬ 
tion and conserving his vital force. Through his 
half-closed lids he began to see curious coloured 
lights, and the scattered fir trees under their loads 
of snow would from time to time seem to stagger 
grotesquely, then recover themselves and stand 
erect again with the rigid air of a drunken man 
who protests he is not drunk. McLaggan found 
himself laughing foolishly at the action of the 
trees, and assuring himself that if they had really 
staggered they must have shed their snow. Then 
his watchful will prodded his brain sharply to at¬ 
tention; and, thoroughly startled to observe how 


180 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

his wits had wandered, he pulled himself together 
with renewed resolution. A critical glance at his 
back tracks, however, showed him that it was his 
wits only, and not his feet, that had wavered. He 
gathered a handful of bud-tips from a birch sap¬ 
ling, chewed them vigorously, and floundered 
forward with the feeling of having made a fresh 
start. 

In response to the spur of his will McLaggan 
kept going for another hour. But now, under the 
persistent sapping of his energy by the intense 
cold, the violence of his exertion was no longer 
keeping up his internal warmth. He began to 
persuade himself that it would be best to find a 
sheltered spot, build a fire, warm himself, and rest. 
His saner self, however, reminded him angrily 
that as he had nothing to eat he would only grow 
weaker and weaker beside his fire till he could no 
longer gather wood for it, and would then lie 
down to death beside its ashes. Time, as well as 
all else in the world, he told himself bitterly, was 
against him. Well, he would not yield. He 
would not meet Fate lying down. He would fall 
fighting, if fall he must 

At this point McLaggan hardly had life enough 
left to see where he was going. He found him¬ 
self suddenly confronted by a high ledge of grey 
and black rock, its steep front shrouded to half 
its height with snow. Again he had lost his way. 


The Cave of the Bear 181 

The shock revived him for a moment. His eyes 
opened wide. He braced back his shoulders. He 
would climb the ledge; and perhaps from that post 
of vantage he might find himself nearer to his 
destination than he had dared to think. After all, 
he had been travelling many hours since last 
night’s camp. 

A little to the right the ledge offered a chance 
of easy ascent. Close past the face of it McLag- 
gan went floundering desperately, hugging his new 
hope and refusing to admit to himself for an 
instant how piteously frail a one it was. His first 
steps went deeper than he expected. They found 
no bottom. With a startled cry he threw him¬ 
self backwards, but too late to extricate himself. 
His face blinded in the smother of snow, he shot 
down feet foremost, landed softly, pitched aside 
sharply to the left into empty space, and fell in a 
heap, his exhausted muscles refusing to make any 
further effort whatsoever. 

hi 

Lying there with his eyes shut, McLaggan’s first 
dim thought was: “That settles it! Better here 
than out there in the damned snow!” He just 
wanted to go to sleep. But once more that in¬ 
domitable will of his got busy, and prodded his 
brain awake. It prodded his senses awake. This 


182 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

faint warmth enwrapping and reviving him! It 
was not the fatal illusion of those who are freez¬ 
ing to death. It was something outside himself. 
He savoured it as he drew in his breath. Then 
his woods-wise nostrils, long benumbed, suddenly 
regained their sensitiveness. They sniffed with 
enlightenment. There was no mistaking that 
pungent smell! McLaggan realized that he had 
fallen into the cave of a hibernating bear. 

This meant food, strength, salvation! Mc¬ 
Laggan’s stiff fingers assured themselves that they 
still clutched his rifle. Stealthily he felt f.or his 
knife. It was in his belt. But it was no time for 
haste or blundering. He stifled the sudden rage 
of his hunger, silenced his harsh breathing, and 
listened. He remembered that by this time of 
year a bear would be nearing the end of its winter 
sleep and beginning to shake off its torpor. Per¬ 
haps this one was awake, and if so, a terrible an¬ 
tagonist at such close quarters! His ears strained 
intently. He caught a sound of suckling, a faint, 
small, sleepy whimper of content, a low, slow sound 
of deep-lunged breathing. The situation was clear 
to him on the instant. Certainly the owner of the 
cave was sleeping soundly, not to have been dis¬ 
turbed by his rude invasion of her fond home. 
McLaggan turned his head towards the direction 
of the sounds, and presently his eyes managed to 
distinguish their source. 


The Cave of the Bear 183 

McLaggan thought swiftly. He knew bears. 
He knew that, as a rule, it is only the females 
heavy with young that “hole up” in this way for 
the winter. He knew that they frequently gave 
birth to their cubs before the end of their winter 
sleep. And he had been told by a wise old Indian 
guide that under such conditions a bear, unless 
aroused by violence, was quite stupidly gentle and 
tractable. He thought of his own present weak¬ 
ness. Well, he would take no risks. He must see 
to it that one shot would settle the matter instan¬ 
taneously. For already his last spurt of strength 
and decision was dying down, and he felt a deadly 
exhaustion stealing over him. 

With rifle ready McLaggan crawled close up 
to that large, obscure form, put out a cautious 
naked hand, and touched it. It was the silken, 
furry head of the suckling cub that he touched. 
The cub gave a little whimper of content at the 
touch, mistaking it for the mother’s caress. The 
warmth, the softness, a ridiculous sense of secu¬ 
rity and shieldedness in contrast to the bitter 
loneliness of death outside the cave, produced an 
amazing effect on McLaggan in his weakness. He 
wanted to hug the warm cub to his heart, and 
maudlin tears welled to his eyes. But fortunately 
at the same moment another impulse, not only 
stronger but saner, seized him. He realized that 
the cub was swallowing warm milk. With a gasp 


184 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

of greed he thrust his face down into the mother's 
fur, beside the youngster’s head. His eager lips 
found and closed upon the object of their quest, 
and in a second more he was drawing warm life 
into his shrunken veins. 

At this stage it was beyond McLaggan’s power, 
or wish, to think. The reaction was too exquisite. 
He drank, and drank, snuggled against the cub. 
He was warm at last. He was comfortable be¬ 
yond the utmost dream of comfort. One foolish 
hand moved up confidingly like a baby s and 
clutched into the deep fur on the mother’s flank. 
McLaggan, there between the bear’s great paws, 
was dozing off to sleep. 

Presently the mother stirred. This unwonted 
drain upon her resources began to reach her con¬ 
sciousness with its tidings of something out of the 
ordinary. She lifted her head in a drowsy fash¬ 
ion, craned it about, and sniffed inquiringly at the 
cub. It was nursing, and whimpered a contented 
response to her caress. Plainly it was all right. 
Her great muzzle passed it over, and came in 
contact with McLaggan’s face, glued to one of 
her teats. 

She drew back her muzzle. This was so sur¬ 
prising that she almost woke up. But the hiber¬ 
nating drowsiness was still thick in her veins, cloud¬ 
ing her brain. She sniffed at McLaggan again. 
She did not quite like the smell of him. But on 


The Cave of the Bear 185 

the other hand she liked well what he was doing. 
It seemed at once to establish a claim upon her. 
She was a very big and healthy bear, who in her 
previous essays in maternity had always achieved 
twins; and now this one rather puny offspring of 
hers was not fully absorbing her superabundant 
milk. McLaggan’s greedy demands were com¬ 
fortable to her. And he was so obviously harm¬ 
less and friendly. She adopted him complacently. 
She licked the back of his head for a few seconds, 
so vigorously that she pushed his cap off; and 
McLaggan, waking just sufficiently to think he 
was in a propitious but preposterous dream, 
clutched her fur more securely and renewed his 
blessed meal. 

Still dimly puzzled, but too drowsy to consider 
the matter further, the bear gave a satisfied woof 
and settled back to sleep again. 

When McLaggan, after hours of deep slumber, 
woke up again, his first conscious thought was that 
he felt quite well and strong, but somewhat wearied 
by dreams. By this time it was night in the 
world, and the darkness of the cave was absolute. 
At first McLaggan thought he was in his bunk at 
the camp. Feeling his face and hands buried in 
warm, breathing fur, he decided that he was still 
dreaming, and he lay very quiet, with his eyes 
shut, striving to keep his hold upon such a curi¬ 
ous and interesting dream that he might remember 


186 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

it in all details. But under this effort his brain 
flashed clear; and with a jump of his heart he 
realized exactly where he was. The trained pru¬ 
dence of the woodsman, however, saved that jump 
of the heart from translating itself to the muscle. 
For a moment he felt a chill of fear. Very softly 
he felt for his rifle. Yes, there it was, close at his 
side, where he had let go of it in order to feed 
more greedily. He relinquished it again at once, 
with a curious qualm as if he had been caught in 
an act of treachery. At least, there was no need 
of doing anything detestable for the moment. The 
furry pillow beneath his head was heaving so 
slowly that he knew the bear was sound asleep. 
The cub, too, no longer nursing, was asleep. He 
touched it, and its little paws were folded over 
its nose. Then he noticed a slight chilly feeling 
on the back of his head and neck. He felt the 
place with his hand, and realized that the bear 
had recently been licking him. She had licked the 
hair firmly in the wrong direction, and left it moist. 
At this evidence of the great beast’s complacency 
towards his intruding helplessness, when she might 
so easily—and justly—have crunched his neck 
with one lazy snap of her jaws, a wave of grati¬ 
tude surged up in his heart, followed by a spasm 
of disgust as he thought of the hateful deed to 
which he should probably be driven. Every fibre 
of him now shrank from such a deed. Perhaps 


The Cave of the Bear 187 

if he could have a smoke some way of escape from 
it might be revealed to him! 

But the lighting of a match, the pungent smell 
of the pipe! There would be risk of rousing his 
strange hostess, to a too discriminating wakeful¬ 
ness ! However, his confidence grew as he thought 
of how assiduously she had licked the back of his 
head. That, he reflected, was nothing short of 
adoption. He had been accepted and admitted to 
full cub-ship. He allowed himself to stroke the old 
bear’s head and scratch it softly around the ears; 
and he was rewarded by a sleepy woof of satis¬ 
faction. 

He sat up, and, leaning back luxuriously against 
the bear’s stomach, proceeded to fill his pipe, feel¬ 
ing very safe and comfortable. Then, rising care¬ 
fully to his feet without disturbing the cub which 
had been nestled against him, he groped his way 
to the exit, which he discovered by plunging his 
hand into the snow. Here, with his back to the 
bear, and concealing the flame of the match be¬ 
neath his coat, he lit the pipe, and stood there 
blowing every mouthful of the smoke carefully 
forth through the snow. But here by the opening 
of the cave he was sharply reminded of the terrors 
of the outer cold. By the time he had finished his 
pipe he was chilled to the bone. Gratefully he 
turned back to his warm retreat and snuggled 
down again between the old bear’s paws. The 


188 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

cub had resumed its nursing. He promptly fol¬ 
lowed its example; and having made a good*meal 
he dozed off to sleep again, telling himself it would 
be time enough in the morning to face decisions. 
His first need, surely, was to recover his strength! 

This time, being deeply at ease in his mind, 
McLaggan slept long. He woke up very hungry, 
and at once, by prompt instinct, applied himself 
thirstily to the copious source of nourishment 
which had already served him so well. Then, 
opening his eyes, he found that the cave was full 
of a faint, glimmering, bluish light, and he realized 
how long he must have slept. His watch had 
stopped long ago, forgotten, but it must be well 
past noon, and a brilliant day in the icy world, 
to send so much light into his refuge. He looked 
at the sleeping, shaggy bear. He looked at the 
sleek little cub, suckling, and snuffling, and knead¬ 
ing its mother’s breast with its baby paws. He 
thought of the ancient story of the viper, which 
stung the man who had warmed it to life in his 
bosom. “Not for me, thank you!” he muttered. 
“I’ll fill my skin right up to the neck with your 
good milk, old girl, and see if I can’t make Burnt 
Brook on that. It can’t be far now, and thanks 
to your hearty hospitality I feel quite fit.” 

Having swallowed all the milk that he could 
hold, McLaggan was again filling his pipe, when 
through the curtain of snow he caught a faint 


189 


The Cave of the Bear 

sound of human voices. Instantly jamming on his 
cap, and snatching up his rifle and snow-shoes, he 
dived through the snow, crashed through the 
branches of the bush, and struggled, spluttering 
and blowing, to the top of the hole. Before he 
could get the snow out of his eyes, his ears were 
greeted with a cry of “Well, I’ll be damned! Here 
he is!” 

Two of the “hands” from the camp, Long Jack- 
son and Baldy Davis, grinning broadly with re¬ 
lief through the icicles on their moustaches, and 
steaming from their nostrils like locomotives, stood 
before him. 

“What’s been the matter, Mac?” demanded 
Baldy Davis. 

“Got lost, like a damn fool,” answered McLag- 
gan. “Fell in a hole. Broke my snow-shoes. 
Thank God you’ve come. But what fetched you 
along this way?” 

“The Boss wanted you to see to something or 
other for him at the settlement, and phoned in to 
Curtis’s last night. When they said you hadn’t 
turned up, he knowed something was wrong. So 
he sent Long Jackson an’ me out on yer trail afore 
daylight this mornin’, in a hurry; an’ you bet we’ve 
done some travellin’.” 

‘Thought we’d find you stiff,” broke in Jack- 
son. “But you don’t look dead. What you been 
doin’?” 


190 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

“Hugging up to a sleepy-old bear, to keep warm, 
bless her,” explained McLaggan. “Got any grub 
with you? I want a square feed, and a tin of 
tea.” 

“A bear?” cried Davis eagerly, snatching at his 
gun and starting to slip off his snow-shoes. “Where 
is he? In that hole?” 

“No, you don’t, Baldy,” snapped McLaggan, 
sharp as a whip-lash, grabbing Davis savagely by 
the wrist. “No, you don’t! See?” 

Then, noticing Davis’s astonishment, he con¬ 
tinued more mildly: “You see, Baldy, that old 
bear’s my pal. She adopted me, that she did, 
when I was just all in. Why, she’s licked my back 
hair all the wrong way, so hard I don’t know as 
I’ll ever get it to lay straight again.” 

“My mistake. I apologize,” responded Davis 
good-humouredly. 

Long Jackson, a woodsman and trapper of 
experience who had been wont to study the wild 
kindreds even more intently than he hunted them, 
divined all McLaggan’s experience in a flash. 

“I see,” said he, nodding his head. “An old 
she-bear, an’ cubs, eh? Too sleepy to know the 
difference, eh? An’ I’ll bet you stole the cubs’ ra¬ 
tions, eh, Mac?” 

“Only one cub—and me!” laughed McLaggan-. 
“There was plenty for the two of us. But right 
now I’d like something solider than warm milk.” 

“We’ll move round yonder into the sun, an’ 


The Cave of the Bear 191 

build a fire, an’ have a feed,” said Jackson. 
“Baldy an’ me’s needing it most as much as you. 
Here’s an extra pair o’ snow-shoes we brought 
along, case of an accident. We’re not more’n two 
hours from the settlement now.” 

Snug beside the deeply trenched fire, with bread 
and bacon between his ribs and a tin of scalding 
tea in his hand* McLaggan unfolded his adven¬ 
tures. 

“So now, you see,’' he concluded, “I’m a bear 
by adoption and grace. Do you wonder I’ve got 
a soft spot in my heart for the old girl?” 

“I guess,” said Baldy Davis, chewing thought¬ 
fully on his pipe-stem, “ye’d better not say any¬ 
thing at all about it, not to wobody, Mac. There’s 
all kind of folks in at the settlement; an’ like as 
not there’d be some skunk stinkin’ mean enough 
to come right out here after that bear’s pelt.” 

“Baldy’s right,” grunted Jackson. 

McLaggan meditated, scowling darkly. Then 
he got up, took a snow-shoe, and carefully shov¬ 
elled back the snow into the hole till there was no 
sign to distinguish it. 

“That’s a damn good notion of yours, Baldy,” 
said he. “Mum’s the word, till the snow’s off. If 
I got wind of any blasted sinner messing round 
after that there bear, before she’s out an’ around 
and able to take care of herself, I’d break his 
neck for him, that I would.” 


IN THE MOOSE-YARD 


i 

From across the wide, wooded valley of the 
lone Tin Kettle, borne clearly on the frosty and 
sparkling air, came the sharp sounds of axe- 
strokes biting rhythmically into solid timber. 

The great moose bull, who had been drowsing 
in the dusky depths of the fir thicket, beside his 
hump-shouldered cow and her two long-muzzled, 
leggy calves, shot his big ears forwards like an 
apprehensive rabbit, lifted his huge, ungainly 
head, distended his moist nostrils, and sniffed anx¬ 
iously. They were so super-sensitive, those ex¬ 
pert nostrils, and the wilderness air was so clean, 
that even across the wide expanse he could detect 
the acrid tang of wood-smoke. Heaving up his 
black bulk with no more noise than if he had been 
a shadow, he parted the branches cautiously with 
his long muzzle and peered forth. 

It took him but very few moments to realize 
what had happened. The lumbermen had come 
back to the old, long-deserted camp across the val¬ 
ley. All winter through, the valley would ring with 
rough voices, with the sharp percussion of the axe- 
192 


In the Moose-Yard 


193 


strokes, the jangle of chains and harness, and the 
snorting of busy teams. It would be a bad neigh¬ 
bourhood for the moose. Therefore, though the 
valley was a comfortable one for his winter quar¬ 
ters, the wise old bull wasted no time in coming to 
a decision. In a few throaty rumblings this deci¬ 
sion was conveyed to the cow and calves. And 
with fierce resentment in his heart he led the way 
back into the depths of the forest, back, far back 
from the place of sudden peril. He would find 
his family a new home, remote and secure from 
the hungry pot-hunters of the camp. 

The snow had held off unusually late that sea¬ 
son, and even now, at the beginning of December, 
it was hardly a foot deep on the level. Moreover 
it was dry and light, so the going was easy for the 
migrant family. Travelling at a long, effortless 
trot, which seemed slow but nevertheless covered 
ground amazingly, the little procession pushed, in 
ghostly silence, deeper and deeper into the white, 
colonnaded glades of the fir forest. From time 
to time some drooping branch, snow-burdened, 
stirred at their shadowy passing and shook down 
its thick white powder upon their dark hides. 
Sometimes a startled snow-shoe rabbit leaped into 
the air almost beneath the great black leader’s 
nose, bounded aside, and sat up, unafraid, on his 
haunches, with waving ears, to watch the inoffen¬ 
sive travellers go by. And once a big grey lynx, 


194 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

meeting them suddenly, clawed up into a tree with 
a snarl and glared down upon them with round, 
moon-like, savage eyes, itching to drop upon the 
neck of the smaller calf, but well aware of the 
doom which would follow such rashness. 

By sunset the travellers had put leagues of dif¬ 
ficult country between themselves and the dreaded 
lumbermen. The wise old bull was not content, 
however, for he knew that the trail behind them 
was plain as a beaten highway. But he judged it 
time for a halt. While the shadows crept long 
and level and violet-black across the snowy glades, 
and the westward sides of the tree-tops were 
stained red-gold with the wash of the flaming sky, 
the travellers browsed hungrily on the fragrant 
twigs of the young birch and poplar trees and the 
sweet buds of the striped-maple saplings. Then in 
the fast-gathering dusk they all lay down to rest 
and ruminate for an hour or two, under the 
branches of a wide-spreading hemlock. A morose 
old porcupine, hunched up in a crotch above their 
heads, squeaked crossly and grated his long yellow 
teeth at this intrusion upon his solitude. But they 
had no quarrel with the porcupine, and only the 
two inquisitive calves took the trouble to glance up 
at the source of the strange noises. 

Two or three hours later, when the moon rose, 
the forest became all black and silver and ethereal 
blue; and under the spectral gleams and through 


In the Moose-Yard 


195 


the sharp, distorting shadows the fugitives resumed 
their flight. Presently they emerged from the 
wooded country and crossed a low, bleak ridge of 
granite and scrub where the snow had been swept 
away, except from the clefts and hollows, by a re¬ 
cent gale. Traversing this harsh region in haste, 
the great bull led the way down the further slope, 
and reached once more the shelter of a belt of fir 
woods. 

The night-sky by this time had become thickly 
overcast, till the only light was from the wide, 
vague glimmer of the sheeted earth. And now 
snow began to fall,—a thick still fall of small 
flakes, which the weather-wise bull knew was the 
kind of snowfall that would last for many hours, 
if not for days. He knew that it would speedily 
cover up the trail behind him. The immediate 
danger from the pot-hunters of the lumber camp 
—who care little for the game-laws—being thus 
removed, he led the way into the shelter of the 
trees; and once more the little party, this time with 
unanxious hearts, lay down to sleep in the soft 
and muffled dark. 

Not yet, however, was the crafty bull content 
with his distance from the lumber-camp. His des¬ 
tination was clear in his mind’s eye,—a region of 
low-lying land, of mixed swampy barren and 
stunted birch-woods, dotted with shallow ponds, 
and producing no timber of a growth to tempt the 


196 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

axes of the lumbermen. All the following morn¬ 
ing he pressed on with his tiny herd, keeping his 
direction unerringly though the snow fell so thickly 
that no landmarks could be detected. Early in the 
afternoon the snow ceased, the white-grey sky 
changed to a sharp and steely blue, and the sun 
shone dazzlingly, bringing not warmth, however, 
but an intense and snapping cold. The dead- 
white wastes flashed into a blinding sparkle of dia¬ 
mond points. And then, when the first thin rose 
of approaching sunset was beginning to flush the 
shining glades, he reached the place of his desire. 

Close in the hollow, southward-facing curve 
of a dense fir copse, overtopped by a group of tall 
hemlocks, the bull proceeded to establish his new 
winter home. Here, beneath the wide branches of 
the hemlocks, was a dry shelter shielded from the 
fiercest winds by the thick, surrounding screen of 
young firs; and here, too, was abundant forage, in 
the stunted birch, poplar and willow which dotted 
the levels outside the copse. For the moment the 
moose family chose to pasture on the low berry 
bushes and coarse herbage, which they could still 
get at easily by pawing away the snow. But they 
knew that it was now only a matter of days before 
the great winter storms would set in, and the snow 
would gather to a depth of five or six feet on the 
level, making all movement slow and toilsome for 
their heavy bulks. 


In the Moose-Yard 


197 


It was with forethought of these storms to come 
that the prudent bull, aided by his cow, set about 
the establishment of their winter quarters. To the 
woodman these winter quarters of the moose are 
known as a “moose-yard.” In the lay mind a 
“moose-yard” is pictured as a sort of wild farm¬ 
yard, surrounded by walls of the deep untrodden 
snow instead of farm buildings, the snow within 
it all trodden flat or pawed clear, wherein the 
moose family passes the winter pasturing preca¬ 
riously on such branches as hang within reach. 
But it is nothing of the sort. Except for the clear 
space under the trees, serving as sleeping quarters, 
it is rather a maze than a yard. It consists of an 
intricate labyrinth of deeply trodden, narrow 
paths, winding this way and that to touch every 
bush, every sapling, every thicket which affords 
the moose suitable browsing. These paths are 
trampled free after each heavy snowfall, and ex¬ 
tended, laboriously as the supply of provender 
nearest home begins to run short. Threading these 
labyrinths the moose move freely and at ease; and 
only under sternest compulsion will they break 
out into the soft, six-foot deeps of the snow, where 
they flounder to their bellies and are at the mercy 
of foes whom at other times they would utterly 
scorn. 

For a couple of days now, the little moose fam¬ 
ily had fine weather, giving them time to settle 


198 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

down, and to tread out their trails to all the 
choicest thickets. Then the snow set in, in earnest. 
For four whole days it snowed, steadily, thickly, 
blindingly, as it only can snow when it tries on the 
high barrens of northern New Brunswick. All the 
wilderness world was muffled in a white silence. 
The moose were kept busy trampling out the paths 
that they might not be utterly obliterated. In the 
course of this task the great bull shed his mighty 
and magnificent but no longer needed antlers. He 
had grown them, in all their formidable splendour, 
during the past summer, for the sole purpose of 
battling with his rivals in the mating season; for 
against other adversaries he used no weapons ex¬ 
cept his knife-edged, pile-driving fore-hoofs. For 
weeks, the network of copious blood vessels at 
the roots of his antlers, which had nourished their 
marvellous growth, had been shrinking and dry¬ 
ing up. And now, whether of their own weight or 
at the pull of an overhanging branch, they dropped 
off, painlessly, and were buried in the snow. The 
bull merely shook his huge head for a moment or 
two, as if surprised; and then went on with his 
trail-breaking, glad to be relieved of the useless 
burden. 


II 

Winter, having started so late and so half¬ 
heartedly, now seemed to repent its irresolution, 


In the Moose-Yard 


199 


and set itself with redoubled rigour to make up for 
lost time. Storm succeeded furious storm, with 
intervals of clear, still weather and cold of an in¬ 
tensity that appeared to draw down unmitigated 
from the spaces of Polar night. Never had the 
old bull known so savage a winter. But for him 
and his little family, hardy, well-sheltered from all 
the winds, and with abundant provender always in 
reach, neither driving storm nor deathly frost had 
any special terrors. They fed, grunted, ruminated, 
slept, blew great clouds of steamy breath from 
their hot red nostrils, and patiently abided the far- 
off coming of spring. 

Not so, however, the other dwellers of the wil¬ 
derness,—excepting always, of course, the su¬ 
premely indifferent porcupine, who, so long as he 
can find plenty of hemlock twigs and bark to stuff 
his belly with, pays little heed to cold or heat, to 
sunshine or black blizzard. The weasels, foxes, 
lynxes, fishers, all were famishing; for the rabbits, 
their staple food, were scarce that year, and the 
grouse and ptarmigan, appalled at the bitterness 
of the cold, took to burrowing their way deep into 
the snow-drifts for warmth,—so deep that their 
scent was lost, and they slept secure from the 
fiercely digging paws of their hunters. As for the 
bears, most of them had “holed up” discreetly at 
the first of the storms, and now, in little rocky 
caves, or dens hollowed beneath the roots of some 


200 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

great fallen tree, under a six-foot blanket of snow 
were comfortably sleeping away the evil time. But 
a few old males, morose and restless, had as usual 
refrained from hibernating; and these now, gaunt 
and savage with hunger, prowled the smitten waste 
incessantly, ripping rotten tree-trunks open for a 
poor mouthful of wood-grubs or frost-numbed 
ants, and filling their paunches with twigs and bit¬ 
ter lichens. One of these fierce wanderers, mad¬ 
dened with his pangs, so far forgot his woods-lore 
as to pounce upon a plump porcupine and, in spite 
of its stinging spines, wolf it down greedily. It 
was his last meal of any sort. His mouth, nose, 
throat and paws were stuck full of the deadly 
spines, so barbed that, although he could rub them 
off, the long needle points remained and swiftly 
worked their way inwards. These would pres¬ 
ently have caused his death, a lingering one; but 
two or three of the quills which had got down into 
his stomach were merciful and did their work more 
quickly. A few days later his lean body, frozen 
stiff, was found, doubled up in the heart of a 
spruce thicket, by a pair of prowling lynxes, who 
thereafter fared sumptuously every day until ru¬ 
mour of the prize got abroad; when foxes, wolver¬ 
enes and fishers came flocking to the feast and 
made short work of the huge carcass. 

It was this same hunger-madness, too, which 
drove another bear to the perilous venture of an 


In the Moose-Yard 


201 


attack upon the moose-yard. Seeking a new hunt¬ 
ing-ground, he had wandered unhappily out to the 
edge of the barrens, hoping that there he might 
have better luck than in the deep of the woods. 
As he drew near the moose-yard he was thrilled to 
see some signs of life in the otherwise lifeless waste. 
There were fresh fox tracks and weasel tracks, 
with now and again the great pad-marks of a for¬ 
aging lynx. The unconcerned moose-family, well- 
fed and comfortable in their sheltered quarters, 
had a vain fascination for all the ravenous wan¬ 
derers. The moose-yard afforded asylum to half 
a dozen pairs of impudent little Canada jays, or 
“moose-birds,” who hopped and pecked fearlessly 
about the trodden ground, and frequently roosted 
on the backs of their lordly hosts, warming their 
toes in the long, coarse hair and exploring it with 
their beaks for insect-prey. Once in a while a 
reckless weasel or fox would dart down into the 
“yard” and try to catch one of these self-confident 
birds. But the jays, screaming derision, would fly 
up into the branches overhead; the cow moose, 
more nervous and short of temper than the great 
bull, would strike out angrily at the intruder; and 
one of the calves, always ready for a diversion, 
would rush at him and chase him from the sanctu¬ 
ary. For the moose disliked the smell of all the 
hunting beasts. 

Stealing warily up-wind, the famished bear at 


202 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

last caught the smell of moose, and knew that 
he was approaching a moose-yard. Now in an 
ordinary winter, with food fairly abundant, and 
hunting reasonably easy, he would have turned 
aside at this smell to avoid tantalizing himself 
with the unattainable. But now, when he was 
close on starving, it was another matter. His 
lean jaws watered at the thought of warm red 
meat. For merely one taste of it what risk would 
he not face? And the bull presiding over this 
particular moose-yard might, possibly, be a weak¬ 
ling. 

But however rash his venture, he did not go 
about it rashly. His desperation only made him 
the more cautious. There was so infinitely much 
at stake. Sinking himself deep into the snow he 
wound his way forwards soundlessly, and, behind 
the screen of a thick fir bush lifted his black head 
to reconnoitre. In a flash, however, he sank down 
again and shrank back deep into the snow, every 
nerve quivering with fierce hope. The long muz¬ 
zle of the younger moose-calf had appeared over 
the edge of the snow wall a few feet away, and 
was pulling vigorously at the branches of a pop¬ 
lar sapling. 

The bear knew something of moose-yards. He 
knew that, while he himself was hampered by the 
deep, soft snow, his intended prey had the well- 
trodden paths to move in, and could make swift 


In the Moose-Yard 


203 

escape, at the least alarm, back to the protection 
of its mother and the gigantic bull. As he could 
see by the violent rocking of the poplar the calf 
was very busy and engrossed. He worked his way 
stealthily a little to one side, still shielded by the 
dense fir bush, till he was within five or six feet of 
the unsuspecting calf. Then, gathering beneath 
him all the force of his mighty haunches, he hurled 
himself forwards and burst into the deep pathway. 
From the corner of its eye the calf glimpsed a 
huge and dreadful black form looming over it, 
and with a squeal of terror turned to flee. But 
in the same fraction of a second it was struck 
down, with its frail back broken at a single 
blow. 

Famished as he was, the bear could not resist 
the temptation to delay for one brief instant, while 
he tore a throbbing mouthful from the victim’s 
throat and gulped it down. Then he dragged his 
prize back behind the shelter of the fir bush, and 
went floundering off with it in desperate haste 
through the snow, hoping that he had not been 
seen. 

But the hope was a vain one. The bull and the 
cow had been lying down. At the calf’s cry they 
had shot to their feet. Their furious eyes had 
marked the slaughter. In deadly silence, ignor¬ 
ing the paths and breasting down the barriers of 
snow irresistibly, they came charging to the ven- 


204 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

geance, the stiff black hair of their necks on end 
with rage. 

The bear, hampered though he was by the depth 
of the snow and by his unwieldy burden, had wal¬ 
lowed onwards for some forty yards or so before 
the avengers overtook him. The cow, in her out¬ 
raged mother fury, was a little in advance of her 
huge mate. What she lacked in stature she made 
up in nimbleness and in swift hate. When she was 
almost upon him the bear wheeled like a flash upon 
his haunches and struck at her,—a terrific, sweep¬ 
ing blow which, had it reached its mark, would 
have shattered her slim fore-leg like a pipe-stem. 
But she swerved, and it flew past her; and in the 
next breath she struck. It was a long-range stroke, 
and she was away again, lightly, out of reach; but 
the fierce thud upon his ribs jerked a squealing 
cough from his throat, and the knife-edged hoof 
tore a long red gash down his flank. Before he 
could retaliate the bull was towering over him, 
from the other side. With a desperate leap he 
evaded that onslaught, hurling himself clear over 
the body of his victim. Then, realizing himself 
overmatched, he fled, his tremendous muscles driv¬ 
ing him through the snow like a steam-plough. 

The cow stopped short at the body of her calf, 
sniffing at it anxiously, and licking it, and trying 
to coax it back to life. But the bull plunged on¬ 
wards in pursuit of the fleeing slayer. With his 


In the Moose-Yard 


205 


great length of stride he had the advantage of the 
bear in that depth of snow, and speedily overtook 
him. The latter whirled about once more to meet 
the attack, but as he did so the snow beneath him, 
upborne on the spreading tops of a clump of flat 
juniper bushes, gave way treacherously, and he fell 
sprawling backwards, clawing wildly, into a little 
hollow. Before he could recover, the bull was 
upon him. One great hoof pounded down upon 
him irresistibly, catching him fair in the defence¬ 
less belly and knocking the wind clean out of him. 
The next stroke smashed his forearm. As he 
surged and heaved beneath those deadly strokes, 
in an agonized struggle to regain his feet, the cow 
arrived. And there in the dreadful smother of 
snow and branches his life was slashed and tram¬ 
pled out of him. Not until the thing lying in the 
trodden and crimsoned snow bore no longer any 
resemblance to a bear did the victorious moose feel 
their vengeance satiated. Then at length they 
turned, and slowly, in the reaction from their rage, 
ploughed their way back to their home yard, 
avoiding, as they went, the spot where the dead 
calf lay stiffening in the snow. The moose-birds, 
chattering approval, fluttered down from the hem¬ 
lock, and hopped about them, scrutinizing their 
blood-stained legs with dark, impudent, bright 
eyes. And the elder calf, a lanky female now ap¬ 
proaching the dignity of a two-year-old, who had 


206 They Who Walk in the Wilds 

watched with startled gaze the progress of the 
battle, greeted them with delighted snorts and 
nuzzlings. Her mother received these demon¬ 
strations with indifference. But the great black 
bull, in his triumph, accepted and returned them 
with lordly condescension, dimly sensing a time 
when the youngster would be grown up. Had she 
been of his own sex, a possible future rival, he 
would have haughtily ignored her transports, or 
brusquely rebuffed them. Except in mating sea¬ 
son the moose is little apt to be demonstrative. 

In a magically short time—so swiftly through 
the frozen silences travels the news of food,—the 
solitude around the moose-yard was broken up. 
The neighbourhood became a place of resort. 
First arrived the hungry red foxes and the snakily 
darting white weasels, to gnaw and tear at the 
great carcasses in the snow, and snarl at each other 
with jealous hate. These small marauders, though 
not often in evidence, had never been far from the 
moose-yard, for they had instinctively anticipated 
some tragedy which they might profit by. Soon 
afterwards came three gaunt grey lynxes, driven 
by hunger, in spite of their morose and solitarv in¬ 
stincts, to hunt together with a view to attacking 
quarry otherwise too powerful for them. Thev 
drove off the foxes and weasels while thev gorged 
themselves. But one fox, a late arrival, venturing 
too near in his eagerness to share the feast, was 


In the Moose-Yard 


207 

pounced upon and devoured. At length appeared 
another famished bear; and all the feasters, great 
and small alike, sullenly made way for him, know¬ 
ing the lightning swiftness of his clumsy-looking 
paw. He sniffed ravenously at the mangled body 1 
of his kinsman, but being no cannibal, turned away 
in disappointment and disgust. The moose-calf, 
on the other hand, was just what he wanted. 
Squatting over it jealously he made a sumptuous 
meal. Then, ignoring the other darting and 
prowling banqueters, he lugged away the sub¬ 
stantial remnants of the calf, to hide them in his 
far-off lair in the heart of a cedar swamp. 

To all this hungry stir, to all this yapping and 
snarling, the moose in their sheltered yard paid no 
attention whatever, but went on browsing or 
drowsing as their mood dictated. Only when the 
bear arrived did they take notice, and grow an¬ 
grily alert. As long as the bear remained upon 
the scene they kept to the centre of the yard, the 
great bull stamping and snorting from time to 
time to show his readiness for battle. But when 
the hear waddled off with his prize, the stiff- 
legged, mutilated thing which had been a moose- 
calf, they once more fell unconcernedly to their 
browsing. 

Days later, when at last nothing was left in that 
trodden snow-hollow but scattered tufts of Hack 
fur and a pinky-white skeleton gnawed and pol- 


20$ They Who Walk in the Wilds 

ished clean, silence once more descended upon the 
glittering white spaces about the moose-yard. By 
night the cold was still of a savage intensity; but 
the days were growing longer, and in the sun’s 
rays at noon-time there was a perceptible warmth. 
The result was a hard crust upon the surface of 
the snow,—a crust so strong that all but the heavier 
creatures of the wild could move about upon it 
easily and swiftly. And now, ravaging down 
across it from their famine-stricken north, came 
the wolves. Not for nearly fifty years had these 
fierce and crafty slayers been seen in New Bruns¬ 
wick. They came not in great packs, as in lands 
where they expect to hunt great game, but rather 
in small bands of four or five, or at most eight or 
ten, scattering over a wide range of country, and 
disdaining no quarry, however humble. Before 
them, on every side, spread panic. Only the moose 
family, sequestered and indifferent, knew nothing 
of it. 

Then, one still and bitter morning, a band of 
four of the grey invaders caught scent of the 
moose-yard, and swept down upon it with their 
dreadful, quavering hunting-cry. At sight of 
these strange galloping beasts, with their long 
jaws and deadly fangs, the first impulse of the 
moose family was to flee. But the old bull, though 
he knew nothing of wolves, saw at once that flight 
would be instantly fatal. Conveying this in some 


In the Moose-Yard 209 

way to his two charges, so effectively that they 
steadied themselves at once and closed up to him, 
he wheeled with a loud snort and stood to face the 
terrible attack. The cow promptly ranged herself 
beside him, while the trembling two-year-old thrust 
herself in between them. 

The wolves, for all their hunger, were wary. 
They halted abruptly at the edge of the yard, im¬ 
pressed by the tall and lowering bulk of the bull 
and by the dangerous calm of his defiance. After 
a moment’s hesitation they divided, two to the 
right and two to the left, and went loping stealth¬ 
ily around the rim of the central space, leaping 
the deep paths and, obviously, awaiting some sign 
of irresolution before dashing in. But presently 
one of them caught sight or scent of that heap of 
fresh-picked bones in the blood-stained hollow, and 
all together they galloped over to investigate. 
They knew very well that if, in the meantime, 
those defiant beasts in the moose-yard should take 
to flight, it would be a simple matter to trail them 
and run them down. 

But nothing was further from the proud old 
bull’s thought than any such madness. Shaking 
his massive head angrily with ever growing con¬ 
fidence he watched the wolves as they fell with 
zest upon the bones of his ancient foe. 

To the powerful jaws of the wolves the bare 
bones were a feast. All but the very biggest they 


210 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

cracked and crunched up, gulping down great mor¬ 
sels with the marrow and fresh juice. But, of 
course, even for them it was comparatively slow 
work, for a bear’s bones are hard and tough. Not 
till well along in the afternoon had they finished 
the job; and then, though no longer famished, 
they were still healthily hungry. One after an¬ 
other they returned to the moose-yard, and began 
stealthily prowling about it, more deliberate now, 
but not less murderously determined. The moose, 
now even more defiant than before, faced them 
sullenly and watchfully, the bull fronting on$ way, 
the cow the other, with the unwarlike two-year- 
old between them. 

To the wolves it was clear that the vulnerable 
point in the moose-family’s defense was this trem¬ 
bling youngster. If they could stampede her off 
from her formidable protectors they could make 
an easy kill of her out in the snow. Suddenly they 
darted down into the yard from three sides at 
once. Two made a cunning feint at the bull, one 
at the cow,—while the fourth sprang straight at 
the youngster’s throat. But the cow, quicker than 
thought, met the latter’s charge with a side slash 
full in the face, which shattered both his jaws; and 
in the same instant she swung lightly to confront 
her own more wary assailant. 

The stricken wolf, half-stunned, and wounded 
to the death, picked himself up, scrambled dazedly 


In the Moose-Yard 211 

forth upon the snow, and staggered off. His three 
companions, taken aback at this evidence of a 
moose’s fighting powers, sprang discreetly out of 
reach. They paused for a moment to glare at 
their hoped-for victim, then galloped after their 
wounded fellow, threw themselves upon him, and 
tore him to pieces. A wounded wolf, in their eyes, 
was of no use whatever except to afford his kins¬ 
men a meal. Having finished their cannibalistic 
repast they turned their tails upon the moose-yard, 
and loped away through the gathering violet dusk 
to look for hunting less perilous and more profit¬ 
able. 

****** 

When spring drew near, heralded by melting 
rains and swift thaws and ardent noonday suns, 
the deep snow shrank with amazing speed. The 
air grew musical with the sound of myriad unseen 
rivulets, mining their tunnels beneath the vast 
white overlay. The buds on poplar, willow and 
birch grew succulent and aromatic, waiting the 
hour to burst into a film of green. The moose 
became restless, breaking new paths ever wider 
and wider afield to sample the freshening proven¬ 
der. Presently their impudent little pensioners, 
the moose-birds, forsook them, pair by pair, in¬ 
tent on new enterprise in the reawakening world. 
Soon afterwards, when the grey, decaying snow 


212 


They Who Walk in the Wilds 

was no longer more than foot deep anywhere on 
the levels, the tall bull, suddenly tiring of the 
charges whom he had so valiantly protected the 
winter through, strode off without so much as a 
grunt of farewell, and disappeared in the fir 
woods. The cow and her two-year-old daughter 
lingered on in the yard, food being abundant, for 
yet another couple of weeks. Then the cow, too, 
was seized with the wandering fever. And as she 
was not going to have a calf that spring,—having 
borne one for three seasons in succession,—she 
lazily permitted the anxious two-year-old to ac¬ 
company her. Through the wet, earth-scented, 
swiftly greening world they wandered on, aim¬ 
lessly, till they came to a little, secluded lake, with 
dense coverts and good browsing about its shores, 
and the promise of abundant water-lilies along its 
oozy brink. And here, well content with the com¬ 
fortable solitude, they took up their dwelling for 
the summer. 



















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